


The Lower Decks

by argle_fraster, astrangerenters



Category: Arashi (Band), KAT-TUN (Band), TOKIO
Genre: Cruise Ships, Friendship/Love, M/M, Rock Stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-24
Updated: 2010-05-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 09:41:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 41,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/306517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argle_fraster/pseuds/argle_fraster, https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrangerenters/pseuds/astrangerenters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's jobs in unfortunate places, jobs with unfortunate people, and jobs that are just plain unfortunate: then there is the Floating Sakura, which seems to be all of the above.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Nino…”

“Be quiet, would you?”

“Nino!” He was whispering more insistently this time.

“I’m right next to you, jackass. Be quiet before…”

The leader walked over, glaring. “You’re noisy. Koki, get him out of here.”

Nino felt an odd twisting in his gut as the one seemingly named after Coca-Cola hauled Aiba to his feet. It was pretty obvious that this wasn’t going to end well.

“Please,” Aiba was begging, his Masaki nametag with the smiley face sticker falling to the deck, clattering to where Nino was still on his knees with his hands behind his head. He could almost feel the others’ eyes on him. Won’t you do something, Nino? Won’t you put your own life at risk to save him?

“I’m telling you,” Aiba said, “if you’re here for Sadie, we can’t help you!”

“Masaki, they’re not here for…”

“You shut up already,” the leader said, pointing his pistol at him. The guy was getting antsy – had the other two he’d sent off already overthrown Captain Kimura and the rest of the crew?

All this time, Nino had been worried about simple things like losing his job – with the way Koki was hauling Aiba to the edge of the lido deck, maybe he ought to worry about the increasingly likely possibility that he might die today.

“Nino, do something,” Jun hissed.

But what? There were only five of them – scratch that, four (Satoshi was somehow snoozing through the mayhem). He’d seen six of them and who knew how many more were robbing staterooms throughout the ship at that very moment.

“We don’t have Sadie!” Aiba cried. “Don’t make me walk the plank!”

There’s no plank here, you idiot, Nino thought, desperate to find some solution here. But there were tears in Aiba’s eyes, and it really was a long way down from the lido deck to the water and the thought of Masaki being gone…

Well, maybe it was enough to make Kazunari Ninomiya do something incredibly stupid.

In spite of the lead pirate’s pistol in his face, Nino got to his feet and held out his fists. The Floating Sakura was his home, and they weren’t going to take it without a fight.

“Sit down or you’ll join your friend.” The pirate gave a signal to Koki, who hoisted Aiba in the air until he was hanging over the side.

Nino just kept up his fists, tilting his head to hear the satisfying pops in his neck as he stared the pirate down.

“Get off our boat.”

\--

TWELVE DAYS EARLIER

\--

Miami.

Nino didn’t really care for Miami. It was humid, for one thing, and he didn’t much enjoy being out of a climate controlled environment for very long. People liked Miami for the great clubbing opportunities – Nino didn’t care much for that. People liked Miami for the food, the Cuban and other Latino influences – Nino didn’t like sandwiches with enough meat to feed a family of four for a week.

And people liked Miami because it was the main departure port for Sunshine Caribbean Cruise Line (amongst others) – Nino especially disliked Miami for that.

He was picking up some snacks at the local 7-11 since they would only be hitting ports with overpriced crap for the next two weeks. There was no way he was spending eight dollars for a candy bar in Cozumel, if he had a chance to get off at Cozumel to begin with. The staff dining hall left a lot to be desired on board so at least he’d have something.

Nino brought his basket up to the counter, noticing his co-worker still hovering in disbelief by the Slurpee machine.

“Sakurai, passengers board in four hours. Just pick a damn Slurpee.”

Sho looked over with a frown. “How do they get the Pow Pow Mega Cherry to taste so real though?”

Nino handed money to the cashier. “Lots and lot of fake additives and chemicals and shit. There is nothing natural in there, so can we move on please?”

Sho stuck his tongue out at him before grabbing a smaller Slurpee cup than his usual and filling it with sugary faux cherry goodness. Nino waited impatiently as Sakurai stocked up on his snacks.

“You’re lucky you don’t room with Matsumoto,” Nino told Sho as they started walking back to the docking area. “He could tell you calorie count, carbs, fat content, cholesterol blah blah for every candy bar you just bought.”

He ignored the skittish way Sho started to walk at mention of Matsumoto. It wasn’t that Jun was a bad person to share quarters with – he was just a little too high-strung for Nino’s liking. Then again, he’d never met anyone who could put away low-carb, organic, all-natural cardboard tasting granola bars like Jun either, so that was sort of intriguing.

“Some of the candy is for Masaki, too,” Sho said. Nino didn’t know Sho’s roommate too well yet – he’d only been contracted for two months so far, but the other three and Satoshi Ohno from the Kyoto Lounge on the Midori deck had contracted with Sunshine three or four times now.

As they turned the corner, Nino sighed at the stark white ship with colorful flags moored in the harbor. The Floating Sakura was the top ship in Sunshine Caribbean’s line – not the fastest (that was the Mindanao Magic) and not the newest (Singapore Sunrise) – but it was the most respected and most luxurious, and Nino was probably lucky to be assigned to her for his first contract.

But he hadn’t wanted to do the Caribbean routes in the first place. He’d wanted to see the world, do a little traveling. Without breaking the bank of course. Working for a cruise line gave him free room and board, he could save the money he earned and enjoy his free time in different ports of call. On Sunshine’s job page, he’d requested placement with the Sunshine Mediterranean fleet, the Sunshine Baltic fleet, even the Sunshine Alaska fleet.

Yet here he was in month two of six, baking in the Miami sun just before another 14 day Mega Caribbean Tour. He couldn’t wait to get back to his snug, but air-conditioned cabin he shared with Jun.

Of course, things never went in Nino’s favor. Before he and his bag of snacks could even reach the lower decks and staff cabins, Nishikido was already tugging on his arm and panicking.

“Nino, you need to get in uniform right now,” Ryo was screeching. Sho saw that this wasn’t going to go well – he waved and headed off for his own cabin, still working on his Slurpee.

He sighed. “What is it? Nobody’s boarding for over three hours.”

“It’s Tegoshi,” Ryo said ominously. Now Nino was paying attention. Tegoshi was the cabin attendant Nino was job shadowing until he was cleared to work on his own.

“The hell did he do?”

Ryo just tugged Nino, snacks and all, down the corridor, seemingly to the elevator and the infirmary on the Kiiroi deck.

“Ryo, will you tell me what’s going on?”

Nishikido looked grave when the elevator doors closed. “Yuya has the clap.”

\--

“Masaki, I’m not yelling. You don’t need to cry.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kusanagi, I’m so very sorry,” Aiba cried anyway.

The purser pursed his lips, frowning at his employee. “All I’m saying is to watch yourself when you type in details about our guests’ belongings. You’re not getting fired!”

Aiba’s tears slowed a bit. So initially he’d been crying because Kusanagi was going to tear him a new one. His mistyping in the computer had ended up with a guest taking home over $30,000 that had definitely not belonged to her. He’d typed in ‘Mary Thomas’ instead of ‘Mary Thompson’ when the woman had deposited her casino earnings in their office.

How was he to know there’d actually be a Mary Thomas on board the Floating Sakura – and a willing thief at that! He couldn’t be a perfect employee like Sho. Sho never made typing mistakes. Sho never misplaced someone’s extremely rare foreign currency. Sho never deleted the entire purser’s office database by accident.

Aiba supposed Kusanagi didn’t get him reassigned to a different part of the ship solely because Aiba was so friendly. And being friendly got the purser’s office high marks on the “How was your trip?” comment card. Sometimes Aiba had even been singled out for praise. It embarrassed him on the outside but pleased him on the inside.

He loved working on the Floating Sakura. He loved meeting new people all the time and though it was always sad to see them go, the next week would be a whole new slew of passengers who could come into the purser’s office. Making friends and sharing life experiences was really what working on a cruise ship was all about.

Not that many of his co-workers agreed with him. Most were just in it for the money they could save or the potential for hook-ups in the staff quarters or the rare but blessed chance to get off the boat and relax on a white sand beach. And unlike Masaki, they didn’t like that they had to smile and be positive every time they were out of their cabins in case guests were around.

“Thank you, Mr. Kusanagi. It won’t happen again, sir.”

His boss just rolled his eyes, scanning the guest manifest on the computer. “Where’s Sakurai? We’ve got that VIP staying on the Aoi Deck.”

Well, Sho was probably still at 7-11 and hopefully getting Masaki a good stash of mini Snickers bars. “Who’s the VIP? I’d be happy to…”

Kusanagi stared at him. “I think not. Do you know what VIP means, Masaki? It means very important person…”

“But Sunshine’s policy is that every guest is a VIP,” Aiba pointed out.

“Don’t quote policy at me. That’s just a line to make middle-aged couples from Nebraska think they’re special.”

Aiba wasn’t as jaded about the cruise industry as his boss seemed to be. “I promise I’ll take very good care of whatever he brings here. Please, give me a chance to prove myself?”

Kusanagi was still clicking through the passenger manifest. “He’s a rock star, and his manager has very specific requests.”

“I’ll do whatever I have to do to make sure his things are safe.”

He gave Kusanagi his most hopeful stare, eyes glistening, hands clasped, Masaki nametag gleaming under the purser’s office’s fluorescent lighting.

“Fine. You’ll coordinate with his cabin attendant. He’s on Aoi Deck, suite 3.” He clicked the mouse again. “Yuya Tegoshi. Go.”

Aiba waited until he was in the corridor before doing a happy dance of joy. He’d earn Kusanagi’s trust – his first VIP. Sho would be so jealous.

\--

“Shun, stop half-assing the tablecloths. They should be crisper than a new hundred dollar bill,” Jun complained as he laid down place settings.

“I’m not half-assing!” Shun grumbled from the next table over.

Jun frowned, rearranging the forks all over again. It had to be perfect – the Welcome Aboard dinner in the Paradise Dining Room was the guests’ first meal and if they wanted to kick the Holiday Buffet room’s seating this trip then Shun had to step it up.

Holiday Buffet drew the families and the chubby couples, but Paradise got the girlfriends on a ladies’ vacation, the businessmen, the wealthier ones. Sure, Jun may have just been a busboy, but he was in Paradise for this contract, and he’d get in the kitchen next time. He had to.

Of course, cleaning up plates of filet mignon and lobster was not what Jun had envisioned when he signed on. It would have been easier to stay home and work in a regular restaurant. He’d probably move up the ladder faster. But Sunshine Caribbean offered him the chance to work with chefs from around the world, in styles collected from all corners of the earth. This was what Jun wanted- what he craved.

This was his dream job.

Just not... busboy duties, per se.

"Seriously, can you hurry up?" Jun asked, moving to the next table as Shun was only starting on the second half of his.

Shun looked annoyed when he glanced up across gold-rimmed goblets. "Not all of us can be you, Jun."

"And rightly so," Jun sing-songed. He carefully placed the shell-shaped napkin ring around the folds and set it gently in the middle of the plate. He was so engrossed in making sure all the fork twines were perpendicular to the bottom of the table that he missed Shun moving up behind him with quiet footsteps.

"Hey," Shun whispered, low and very near Jun's ear, which made Jun jump and startle. "Have you heard?"

"About how creepy you are?" Jun grumbled, tugging at his ear- dammit, that had tickled.

Shun took a glance around the Paradise Dining Room, and then motioned for Jun to lean forward. "We have a rock star with us for the next two weeks."

Just what they needed- someone with their holier than thou attitude telling Jun that the water in their glass was not cold enough for their expensive tastes. He glowered down at the place settings like they were somehow behind this turn of events.

"I hope it's a hot chick," Shun said, a blissful expression on his face.

"Stop imagining yourself on the lido deck with Cindy Crawford," Jun told him, and went back to arranging the tables. "She'd never stoop to your level."

Shun made some grumbles under his breath, but went back to his own assignment, and Jun spent the rest of the time imagining what he was going to serve when he started his own restaurant, and what font he would put the menus in.

\--

Ohno had to admit, he was confused when the first man in a black suit and sunglasses came into the main lobby where his bar was located (guests often wore their sunglasses all the way through the Floating Sakura just because they were on vacation, but rarely did he get anyone in a three-piece suit before embarkation).

He was more confused when the second one came in and began talking into the watch on his wrist, checking the corners of the room for suspicious objects. By the time the rest of them had filtered in through the stairwells, there were four suit-clad men checking out various things around the room- one was doing a sweep of the backside of the curtains near the Grand piano.

"Are you staying in the suites?" he asked one with spiked hair that came over to sniff at the open bottle of vodka Ohno was re-capping. They looked like they would be good tippers.

The one nearest to him, leaning over the bar, pulled out a walkie-talkie that still had some pink Hello Kitty stickers attached to it. Ohno wondered why he needed it with the ear bud visible in his left ear.

"The coast is clear. Jolly Green can come aboard."

Ohno peered in closer to the clip on Ear bud’s lapel- it said Hey Say Security LLC in gold, beveled letters, and below that Agent Chinen in slightly larger font.

"So you guys are security guards?" Ohno asked. They didn't look very old. They also didn't look like they could actually stop him if he decided to rush the object in question, but he didn't really think that was good to mention, on the off-chance that they actually were carrying weapons. It might discourage them from buying drinks (if they were even old enough).

The others lined up near the aft stairwell and there were loud tromping boot noises on the tiles. Ohno waited, drying off the last of the red wine glasses, until a man wearing a leopard coat and dark sunglasses stepped into the main lobby. He was taller than all of the security guards- towering at least a couple of inches, if not more, over all of them. He did a perfunctory glance of the area, and then spotted Ohno, advancing immediately to the seashell-lined bar counter and slapping one hand down.

"I'd like one bourbon, one scotch, and one beer," the man said.

"Really?" Ohno asked. It was kind of a weird request. It was also 2 PM, and the ship hadn't even taken off from Miami yet. The man began laughing in loud, rigorous guffaws, smacking his palm against the bar a few times.

Then he stopped, and looked at Ohno a bit awkwardly. "But seriously."

"Oh," Ohno said, and started to pull out glasses to complete the order. The man stood twiddling his fingers against the counter, and Agent Chinen approached him. The security detail still hadn't taken off their sunglasses. Ohno wondered how they could really see anything.

They spoke in hushed tones until Ohno had the three drinks completed, and then the man in the fancy coat reached forward to slam all three down. He seemed to have forgotten that he ordered a beer, because he had to stall and everyone just sort of waited while he drank the whole thing down. A minute or two later, the bottom rim of the bottle hit the counter and the man made a pleased sounding noise.

"So," Ohno started, "I guess you are kind of a big deal."

"That is an understatement, my boy," the man said gravely. "I'm a rock star."

He took the sunglasses off and Ohno looked at him for a long moment, trying to figure out if he recognized him from anywhere. He didn't.

He was pretty sure he shouldn't say this, however.

"Tomoya Nagase," the man said, reaching a hand out. Ohno shook it gingerly.

"Are your guards accompanying you on the cruise?"

Nagase waved a hand at them. "Naw. Can't afford 'em. Just here before take off."

Ohno refrained from explaining that "taking off" was for planes. Instead, he reached for the empty glasses and began rinsing them off in the sink as Nagase sat back and apparently took in the sights. The Floating Sakura's lobby was nice; the vaulted ceiling had colored glass in it, everything was decorated in varying shades of blue, and even the railings of the stairwells were lined with sea shell fragments.

It wasn't the Kyoto Lounge, which Ohno was perhaps overly partial to since it was his usual assignment, but the lobby was a grand way of greeting guests to their Sunshine Caribbean experience.

"Do you like classic rock?" Nagase asked him.

Ohno blinked in surprise at the man. "I don't know. I don't really listen to much other than the music in the lounge."

Nagase did some very elaborate shifting in his chair, face contorted into what Ohno could only assume was an expression of severe disdain. "Well. Might have to change that, then."

"Okay," Ohno said easily, shrugging.

"Anyway," Nagase sighed, standing once more, "my detail tells me this place is clean."

"What did you think was going to be here?" Ohno asked.

Nagase just sort of looked at him, and didn't really answer. "Guess I'll be on my way to my cabin, then."

He left, security detail in tow (all shorter than him, and looking a bit like ducklings following their mother), and it was only when Ohno reached for the empty beer glass that he realized Nagase had failed to tip him.

He let out a long-suffering sigh, and resigned himself to a trying next two weeks.

\--

There were moans coming from inside the infirmary bathroom.

Not the good kind of moans; though, to be fair, Nino didn't really think any kind of moans were good when he was the one forced to get the passengers what they requested, be it condoms or otherwise, but that was beside the point. The point was that the sounds coming from inside were definitely not pleasurable, and were making Nino more than a little uncomfortable. Across from him, Ryo was standing with his arms crossed, staring down at his shoes.

Nino met Ryo's gaze and then the noises within raised an octave, and Nino found the ceiling tiles more interesting to look at.

The pained sounds stopped. Ryo opened his mouth like he was going to say something, and then they started up again, with more volume than before.

"Oh, for the love of god," Nino hissed. "My genitals are going to retract up into my body if I have to listen to much more of this."

Ryo coughed primly and rapped his knuckles against the bathroom door. "Yuya? Are you almost done?"

There was a muffled sounding whimper, and then the flush of the toilet. A few seconds later, the door opened and Nino's mentor came out, white-faced and clammy looking.

"It burns when I pee," Tegoshi said.

"Okay," Nino said cheerily, turning on his heel. "I'm leaving now."

He got halfway to the door before Ryo caught his arm, forcing his feet to stop moving. "Wait, wait! He has to go ashore for treatment, and besides, we can't keep him here right now. It's bad for our publicity."

"Why?" Nino asked, eyeing Tegoshi warily. "Who did he sleep with?"

"218. Shiroi deck," Tegoshi replied. He sounded very glum.

Nino stared at the other man for a very long moment, torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to punch Tegoshi in the face.

"So, what are you saying?" Nino demanded. "You're leaving? You haven't finished training me yet!"

"Well, you're the only one with any training," Ryo said. "And our VIP is coming onboard today, and you're... well, you're going to have to take the assignment. It might take some delicate handling."

Nino's stomach contracted slightly, leaving him vaguely breathless. "Are you serious?"

"Look, it's just for a little while," Ryo continued. He was shifty-eyed, and refused to meet Nino's gaze, finding instead his shoelaces terribly interesting. "Just for the next two weeks. If it goes badly, then we'll just pull one of the stewards who originally came in as a cabin attendant until we can get the roster put back together again."

"Delicate handling?" Nino all but screeched.

Tegoshi sat down gingerly on the cot, looking like movement of any kind pained him. "It's not that hard, really. You just have to keep him especially happy so that he comes back."

"And tells all his friends," Ryo added.

Nino tried to hide behind his hands, but it was a lost cause. His next two weeks were suddenly looking very, very difficult.

"Fine," he ground out. "But next time you are in the middle of training someone, try to time your sexual escapades so that this doesn't happen again."

Tegoshi made a strangled sounding moaning noise. "Don't talk about sex, please. My junk hurts."

"Yeah, I'm so done here," Nino said.

"His name is Tomoya Nagase!" Ryo called at Nino's retreating form. "The paperwork is in the attendant's office with your name on a sticky note! You can't miss it!"

"Probably can!" Nino replied, and let the door slam shut behind him.

\--

Sho smiled at the people starting to file in onto the ship wearing Jimmy Buffet shirts and Tommy Bahama sandals, keeping the grin on his face and waving at a few of the kids who ran past with inflatable tubes already around their waists. "Hello and welcome aboard the Floating Sakura. Please don't hesitate to contact the purser's office should you require any of our services."

An older woman with hair that looked vaguely blue stopped in front of him. "Excuse me, excuse me, where is this boat going?"

"Ma'am, you purchased the cruise, the itinerary has always been public."

The lady seemed to ignore this completely. "But, is it going to the Caribbean?"

"Ma'am, this is the Sunshine Caribbean Cruise Line."

He got an annoyed hand waving in his face and the woman moved on, leaving him to wonder what it was that he had done in a former life that was so terrible. There were footsteps behind him, and then a tap on the shoulder, and he bit back his retort about the ship going to Alaska as he turned.

He found himself face to face with Aiba instead of the confused old woman.

"Are you here to relieve me?" he asked, chest swelling with hope.

"No," Aiba said, "but guess what! There's going to be a VIP on the ship, and Mr. Kusanagi assigned him to me!"

Sho's heart sank further down towards his stomach. "Wait, what? Why you?"

"He obviously just has faith in my people handling skills," Aiba said proudly, which really meant that he'd begged and pleaded his way onto the assignment. Sho opened his mouth to complain and suddenly found himself with a face full of Louis Vuitton leopard print luggage. He fell backwards with a startled cry and a pang of pain shooting down his nose.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" the young woman cried. "Are you hurt?"

Sho waved her off, even as Aiba's fingers were curling around his arm and attempting to haul him back up to his feet. "No, no, it's fine, I'm on local anesthesia. Carry on."

When he pulled his hand away from his face, there was blood on his palm.

"Ouch," Aiba winced sympathetically. "Do you want me to get you a kleenex?"

"This is so not a very good start to the cruise," Sho said, a bit pathetically (he sincerely hoped that Aiba wouldn't tell anyone else about this little incident). "I can't believe you got the VIP."

Aiba pulled out a crumpled napkin from his pocket and started dabbing at Sho's nose. A group of twenty-something girls came up wearing crowns and sashes that said "Bachelorette Party! Judi's Getting Hitched!" on them, and one of them stopped near where Sho was leaning somewhat heavily against the metal doorway, holding out a small packet.

"Here," she said, rhinestones on her sunglasses sparkling in the sun's rays. "It'll help."

"Oh, no," Sho started, because he did have some dignity left, even if it was very small and buried very, very deep, but Aiba reached happily for the offered tampon with a bright smile.

"Thank you so much!" he exclaimed, and then promptly unwrapped it and jammed it up Sho's nostril. Then he just looked expectantly at Sho like he figured he was going to get praise, or at least thanks, and Sho tried to find the nearest hole that he could hide himself in for the duration of the cruise.

"Dis is nod sdarding well," he moaned, head in his hands.

Aiba gave him a quick pat to the shoulder. "Well, I'm going to go and check to see if my VIP needs anything! Try not to get hit with anymore bags, and don't leave that in for more than 6-8 hours."

Sho refrained from tripping him as Aiba made his way back inside the deck to the stairwell.

\--

If Nino had more than say, a Port-a-Potty’s amount of room to himself on board the Floating Sakura, he would have brought his guitar. Nino liked music. He liked playing songs he enjoyed from memory or making his own songs up. Working on a cruise ship didn’t give him much time for his hobbies. Jun was very particular about his sleep regimen anyhow, so it’s not like Nino could have just brought out the guitar randomly.

In his years as a self-taught musician, Nino could say with certainty that he had never once attempted to teach himself a Tomoya Nagase song. It’s not like they were hard - same chord same chord same chord, et cetera. Song topics like drinking beer, getting laid, and getting laid after drinking beer. And the occasional American flag waving patriotic song for a truck commercial.

It just wasn’t Nino’s style. Unlike most of the music listeners in the country, Nino had taste.

Of course, the country hadn’t heard from Tomoya Nagase in some time. At least Nino hadn’t - not that he paid much attention to the guy’s career. A few years back when Nino had just dropped out of college and spent most of his days on the couch, he remembered one of those celebrity gossip shows doing a “Where are they now?” segment on Nagase. He hadn’t released an album in a while, and his last live show had been at the Omaha Small Business Association’s annual barbecue. He’d shown up high on ecstasy.

But here he was, still able to afford the best suite on the ship while Nino would spend the next two weeks catering to the guy’s every sure-to-be-perverse rock star need. Damn that Tegoshi. Nino hoped the guy would stick with his hand for a while. He went over the clipboard that the head steward had put together - special requests from the guest.

No waking up before 11 AM unless there were Belgian waffles. Rose petals from the bed to the toilet (not the bathroom, but specifically the toilet bowl). No fewer than fifteen Almond Joy bars on the bedside table at all times. Gideon’s Bible replaced with the most recent Hustler.

Nino looked at the last request and frowned.

Bedtime story for Mr. Nagase, 1:30 AM (materials will be provided by Mr. Nagase).

He hadn’t even met the guy yet, and he already wanted to throw Nagase off the boat. Or throw himself off the boat. But breaking his contract would adversely affect his finances, and it wasn’t like he had many promising job offers on land anyway. It was just two weeks - he’d deal with it. It just would have been easier if Tegoshi was reading bedtime stories at 1:30 in the morning when Nino preferred to be asleep.

Well, better get the introductions out of the way. He tucked the clipboard under his arm and checked his hair in the mirrored glass of the elevator before the doors dinged open. The plush carpeting of the Aoi Deck cushioned his walk of disappointment as he headed for Nagase’s suite.

There were other wealthy types complaining about the other attendants bringing in their fancy luggage. Nino was pretty thin and quick on his feet, and he was able to smoothly duck in between guests and attendants and...wait, why did that couple need their own personal treadmill for a two week cruise? He put on his friendly smile anyway, nodding politely as he continued to the door at the end of the corridor.

He could hear the bathtub filling as he knocked. They hadn’t even left the dock yet, and the guy was taking a bath? “Mr. Nagase, this is Kazunari Ninomiya, your Sunshine attendant for the voyage. Just wanted to introduce myself.”

Nino distinctly heard a woman’s voice and a splash.

He knocked one more time. “Mr. Nagase? If there’s anything you need to make your departure go more smoothly, I’m here to help. Just wanted to let you know that dinner in the Paradise Dining Room starts at 6:00 following the mandatory lifeboat...”

The door opened.

“...and other safety drills so if you could make your way up to the oh my god, you’re naked.”

The man had to be about half a foot taller than Nino, possibly more, naked as the day he was born. Though Nino supposed he hadn’t been so well...established when he was a baby.

“I...if this is a bad time, sir...”

Nagase slapped a heavy hand on Nino’s shoulder, possibly dislocating something. The rocker squinted at his nametag. “Hey Kazunono, not a bad time, good to see ya!”

Nino looked down. It clearly said ‘Kazunari’ but it wasn’t the easiest name, was it? Don’t look at his dick, he told himself mentally. Don’t look at his dick. Don’t look at his dick. Don’t look at his...

“Like what you see? You know how many girls have played hide the pickle in your mouth with me?”

“I couldn’t venture a...”

“Hell, I lost count once I hit a thousand, haha,” Nagase pulled him into the room by his attendant’s vest. “Could you do something about the broad in the tub?”

“I’m sorry?”

Nagase pulled him aside near the stateroom’s fancy oaken armoire. The guy needed to put some clothes on. Five minutes ago. “Look, I met this chick down when I was checking in, and she totally wanted to get on board my battleship.”

“Okay.”

“But you know, she won’t leave. So since you’re my attendant,” he said, flicking his finger against Nino’s nametag, “maybe you know all the tricks to getting her back to her own place?”

Nino heard more splashing. “Tomoya! Bring that submarine back to my deep water!”

Nagase clasped his hands together and smiled big. “Please, bro? You gotta help me out.”

Okay. Nino was sure of it.

He no longer wanted to live.


	2. Chapter 2

The light in the Paradise dining room was low, supposedly because it made people want to eat more. Jun was still trying to figure out why, on a cruise where the food was included in the booking ticket fee, they cared how much people ate during dinner, but he thought maybe he shouldn't strain too hard thinking that one over. He stood by the door with his hands behind his back, waiting until the empty dishes started to pile up on the tables so he could begin emptying them.

He'd gotten to stand in the kitchen for five whole minutes watching the sous-chef work on the New England clam chowder, so it was already a good night. He could almost feel the tingle of what it would be like to stand by the stoves and prepare dishes from all over the world, it was in the tips of his fingers and on the edge of his vision, just waiting to-

-be thrown into the air with the remains of a shellfish.

Sighing wearily, Jun headed over to the table that seemed to be having so much trouble with their course. He picked up the shell from the ground and put it back on the side of the man's plate, and for his trouble all he got was kind of a half-hearted wave and the open-mouthed chomping of some steak.

He was about to leave, when the man's hand reached out and grabbed his wrist. "Hey, you."

The man in question squinted at Jun's nametag. "John. Hey, John. See that brunette over there with the bangin' legs and the pearls in her hair?"

Jun turned, finding the lady in question who seemed to be enjoying a quiet meal with her family (though not for much longer, if the guest gripping his wrist had anything to say about it).

"I need you to go over and get me her room number. And possibly her name, though that's not really all that important. Mostly the room number."

"I'm not your escort service," Jun spit out through clenched teeth. The fingers holding his arm fell away, and the man patted his chest a couple of times, looking thoughtful.

"Whatever," he said. "Say, can you get me another glass of that fancy wine? And a couple of shots of tequila, while you're at it? Thanks, bud."

Jun's ire flared immediately as his body stiffened, and he was about to give the man a piece of his mind and tell him that he was not an errand boy until the realization came crashing down that yes, that was exactly what he was. It was disheartening to think about as he slowly made his way back to the front of the dining area, where the maitre'd's pillar and the bar were located.

He checked over the table listing for the guest's name, and was startled to find it circled in red with a few misshapen stars drawn next to it. Clearly, Tomoya Nagase was a VIP; there was an arrow pointing down to the far corner where his suite number was hastily scrawled. There were also a couple of question marks, but Jun hadn't the foggiest what those could mean.

He had little choice but to keep the VIP happy and get his drink order.

By the time he got back to Nagase's table, the man had eaten through a second plate of pepper-rubbed New York strip with garlic mashed potatoes, and had left the leafy greens on both seemingly untouched.

"Your drinks," he said, depositing the glasses on the table. Nagase flashed him a grin and a thumbs up sign, and immediately threw back one of the shots.

Jun started to clear the other tables around the room, loading up his arms with empty plates and half-eaten lobster remains, taking them to the kitchen and then doing it again. He'd actually forgotten all about Nagase until his third trip back, when he started to hear the commotion overpowering the Caribbean steel drum band music they insisted on piping through the room.

Nagase was standing up and leaning over the table next to his, and all Jun could see past the man's hulking build was two stocking-ed feet with loafers sticking out past the end of the table.

Correction, on the table.

"Sir! Mr. Nagase, sir!" Jun cried, reaching the man's side in less time than he thought was possible. "Sir, what are you..."

Whatever he thought he was going to see, it wasn't the sight of a 60-something woman lying giggling on top of the dinner table, floral-print shirt pulled up so that Nagase could balance the shot glass in her navel.

"Body shots, John!" Nagase announced, giving the old lady a wicked wink that sent her into another nauseating peal of laughter.

"Mr. Nagase, please," Jun tried, almost unable to get anything out at all due to absolute horror at the scene playing out in front of him. "You can't do that here- there's a family right there with small children. Please, this is a formal dining room..."

Nagase gave him a look that seemed more confused than anything else, and then whirled, two beefy hands grabbing Jun's upper arms and moving him towards the table behind him. "Alright, alright, John, all you had to do was ask and I would have done one off you, too."

Jun's back hit the tabletop and it knocked the wind out of him, and truth be told, his brain was still trying to catch up with everything else that was going on. Nagase yanked Jun's shirt up to his chin and the cold touch of glass hit Jun's stomach and that was when he finally managed to sputter out a far-louder-than-necessary refusal. He also threw both hands up in the air, which sent both tequila shots flying.

They landed on his face.

The liquor sort of burned in his eyes. Jun let out a surprised yelp and rolled off the table, taking the tablecloth and half the empty plates with him, which just ended up falling onto his shaking shoulders. Nagase made an impressed sounding snort.

"Whoa!" he said, and then there was an uproar of commotion all over as Jun was still coughing and wiping at his eyes to get the tequila out. He managed to get himself up on his hands and knees by the time half the kitchen staff had come out to see what was going on, including his manager, his manager's boss, and the head chef himself.

"John, John, buddy," Nagase was saying, and he hauled Jun roughly to his feet. Jun just glared blearily at his superiors forming a semi-circle around him with stinging tears rolling down his face and bits of mashed potatoes sticking to his cheek.

"Mr. Matsumoto," his manager said, and Jun's throat let out an unconscious half-whimper. "Maybe you should.... go and get yourself cleaned up."

Jun couldn't even find the words to agree. He just nodded dumbly and started for the front of the dining room as Nagase called out behind him, "Hey! What about that chick's room number?"

His anger- and flushing embarrassment- hadn't dissipated by the time he stomped down to the crew quarters and rounded the corner that led to the room he shared with Ninomiya. He almost ran into Aiba, who barely side-stepped in time, waving a hand in front of his face and squeezing his eyes shut.

"Jeez, Jun, did you take a bath in tequila or something?" Aiba asked, coughing.

"Not a word, Masaki!" Jun hissed, and threw his door open so hard it smacked into the wall and rattled the sailboat painting hanging there. "Not a freaking word."

He didn't even look back at Aiba's face as he slammed the door shut behind him.

\--

There’d been a whole lot of people buzzing around the purser’s office the first few hours, and he had only just found out that Mr. Nagase’s cabin attendant was no longer on board the Floating Sakura. Aiba hadn’t exactly asked for details, but the pretty nurse in the infirmary, Becky, had been all too willing to share - it seemed that Tegoshi had come down with an STD and was pretty much SOL.

Most of the people in the steward’s office were too busy to deal with Aiba, so it had taken another hour to find out who had been assigned to Mr. Nagase. He supposed he could have gone straight to Mr. Nagase’s suite, but people liked to tell Aiba that he didn’t always go about things in the most obvious or straightforward way.

But luckily, the new attendant was Ninomiya, Jun’s roommate. Nino was a nice enough guy, if a bit sarcastic. Helping out with Nagase would let the two of them get to know each other better. Aiba liked making friends - working for cruises brought people with lots of different backgrounds and personalities together. And having a close friend among the cabin attendants always gave him the best gossip.

Not that Aiba was nosy about passengers, but some people were into really freaky shit. He wasn’t a pervert, not really. But the stories made a long shift in the purser’s office go faster. There was the honeymooning couple who broke their porthole glass with a dildo, the couple who’d asked the staff to reimburse them for a new sex swing, the old couple with the bananas...okay, so maybe Aiba was a pervert. It had been a while since he’d been with anyone and having a roommate made things difficult too.

He found Nino in the bedroom of Nagase’s suite. The room was already really messy. Clothes were everywhere - and unless Nagase enjoyed crossdressing, then he’d already had a girl in the room. This trip was going to be full of fun stories. Nino was changing the sheets with a glum expression.

“Need some help?”

Nino looked up. “You just walk into a guest suite?”

He blushed. Okay, so he’d already broken the most important rule for dealing with passengers. Luckily, Nagase was probably off in the dining room. “Oops.”

Nino shook his head, gesturing for Aiba to hand him the fresh sheets. “Why are you here?”

He and Nino tucked the sheets, and though Aiba wasn’t really trained for this, Nino wasn’t that picky. He was probably just happy for another set of hands. “Well, I’m in the purser’s office. You know, with Sho. So since you’re working for Mr. Nagase here, I just wanted to see if there’s anything he needs our office for.”

“Hasn’t mentioned anything yet,” Nino noted, fluffing the pillows. “He’s been a little busy.”

Aiba brought the comforter over. “He had sex?”

“Are you twelve?” Nino looked apologetic. “Okay, sorry. I’m a little over my head here. I’ve never had a VIP before, and Tegoshi’s out, and this guy...he answered the door naked.”

“Rock stars really know how to live, huh?” If it was socially acceptable, Aiba would probably go without clothes more, but most people didn’t see the world the same way he did. “Well, that’s why I’m here. I’ll help you.”

Nino’s cell phone went off in his pocket, and he grinned. “You wanna help?” He held the phone out to Aiba. “You can talk to his manager. He’s already called me about twelve times. Tell him I’m in the bathroom.”

A rock star’s manager! And he’d get to talk to him! Nino started cleaning up the various trash Nagase had already strewn around the room while Aiba answered. “Hello, Sunshine Caribbean Cruise Line, Nino’s phone, Masaki Aiba speaking.”

“Who? Who is this? Where’d the other one go?”

“Oh, he’s in the can.” Nino threw Nagase’s belt at him, but he dodged. Okay, he had to choose his words better, especially when dealing with a guest’s manager! “He’s using the facilities. Is there something I can help you with?”

“Well, I’m Tomoya’s manager. Taichi Kokubun...”

“Tai chi? Like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?”

“Look asshole.” The guy was already annoyed with him. Aiba heard this tone in people’s voices a lot. “Where’s Tomoya?”

“Where’s Nagase?” he mouthed at Nino, panicking already.

“Dinner!” Nino mouthed back, using Nagase’s t-shirt as a barrier as he picked up a pair of the man’s underwear from on top of the television.

“He’s at dinner, sir!”

“You tell that attendant character to tell Tomoya that the beer commercial is a lock. As soon as he gets back to L.A., he’s getting in a hot tub with Alessandra Ambrosio for Miller Lite.”

“Can do, sir!” Now he was jealous. Maybe he should have been a rock star instead of a purser’s office assistant.

“And one more thing. I packed all of Tomoya’s meds and supplements myself, so can you find the little red bag?”

“Little red bag?” Nino dropped the boxers and dove for Nagase’s nearest suitcase. “We’re...I mean, I’m looking...”

“Well, he’s got the diazepam for the insomnia, clonazepam for the akathisia...”

“Aka-what?” Aiba was beyond confused, and Nino was still digging around to find the bag, swearing under his breath.

“Akathisia. It’s like he can’t sit still. It’s because of the antipsychotics he’s on...those should be in the bag, too.”

“Antipsychotics?” Aiba mumbled, and Nino finally hefted a red bag and unzipped it. Over a dozen pill bottles started spilling out, and Nino just stared at the sheer number of them. “Bag. Red bag, found it!”

“I want to say I put the colon cleanse capsules in there. Can you verify that for me?”

“Colon cleanse?” He gestured for Nino to start looking through the bottles. Finally, Nino held up a purple bottle that had a...turd drawn on it? “Is it the one with the poop on it?”

“Yeah,” Taichi confirmed. “It’s so Tomoya knows what it’s for. He’s functionally illiterate.”

“Oh?”

“He’s got some regularity issues.”

Nino was grinning as he held up another pill bottle. This one had a penis drawn on it with a smily face on the head. “Hey Taichi?” Aiba asked.

“Yeah?”

“How about the one with the dick on it?”

“Oh, that’s for the herpes.” Nino had clearly heard Taichi, immediately dropping the bottle like it was on fire. “Anyhow, let Tomoya know about the beer commercial, would you? I’ll check in after bedtime. Night night.”

Taichi hung up, and Aiba stared at the pharmacy counter spilled out over the comforter. “So that was Nagase’s manager then?”

“Oh yeah,” Nino said, shoving the bottles back in the red bag. “You sure you really want to help out the VIP?”

Well, he couldn’t exactly leave Nino to deal with this alone. Maybe it was out of the exact scope of his purser’s office duties, but he’d show Mr. Kusanagi that he could deal with a difficult passenger. He’d make a new friend, since Nino was funny and kind of cute in his attendant uniform. He’d also meet a rock star.

He held out his hand, and Nino shook it. “You got it. Oh, and we have to tell Nagase he’s in a beer commercial when he gets home.”

“Ah,” Nino answered, picking up a book from the bedside table. “Well, I’ll make sure to let him know before I read him Hop on Pop then.”

This was going to be a fun two weeks.

\--

Rum was good. Rum was kind of spicy, but mixed with Coca-Cola, rum was yummy.

"Rum, rum, rum," Sho sang, "rum is in my tummy."

The bartender at the crew's bar- just past the small quarters and around the bend in the lower decks- he was a slender guy with finely plucked eyebrows and narrow fingers that seemed to be really good at drying the inside of the wine glasses, just kind of looked at Sho like he was crazy. Or maybe Sho just thought he did, since everything was sort of spinning.

"Bad first day?" he asked.

"No," Sho said, and finished his fourth- wait, fifth- glass, "I had the worst day in history. I mean, I'm pretty sure you could look back and no one has had a worse day than me, ever."

The bartender brought out the bottle of rum again. "Maybe Ernest Hemingway."

"Well, okay," Sho amended. "The day he shot himself."

"Don't do something crazy and put your head in an oven or something," the other man warned.

Sho's forehead hit the bar counter and he slumped over it entirely, cheek pressed against the smooth surface. It was kind of grounding, sort of stabilizing. He sighed and the warmth of his breath fogged up the marbled surface a little- the fake marble, since the crew's quarters didn't warrant actual decor.

"Not Sylvia Plath," he mumbled. "What am I going to do?"

"Read The Bell Jar?" the bartender suggested.

"No," Sho moaned. "About Ohno."

There was a bit of silence, and then the clinking of glasses as the bartender moved them around behind the bottles of liquor. Sho waited, gnawing on his bottom lip and closing his eyes, letting the world spin around him. At least the damn tampon wasn't up his nose anymore; thank god for the small favors, if nothing else.

"I thought you and Ohno broke up months ago," the bartender laughed. "You aren't over him yet?"

"Not that!" Sho cried, weakly at best. "He's going to think I'm a slut. Oh god, what if he thinks I'm a slut? I can't let him think I'm that easy. This is awful."

There was more shuffling behind the bar and some voices that Sho tuned out entirely, little snippets of 'hour' and 'shift'. He moved so his forehead was against the counter rather than his cheek, mashing his nose against the top a few times in misery.

"I just can't say anything," Sho sniffled. His voice was half-muffled by the counter his lips were still pressed up against.

"To Ohno?"

"To Jun," Sho wailed. "I can't say anything to Jun. Ohno is going to think I'm easy."

A bottle of something corked was opened with a resounding pop, startling Sho a little.

"And it's not like- well, I mean we broke up months ago, you know? And we're fine, I mean good. I mean it's fine now. But- what is the acceptable amount of time to wait between dating? Aaah, I can't do that, I still work with Ohno, what if he finds out? What if he's upset? What if Jun doesn't like me?"

The bartender pushed a glass down the smooth surface of the counter, and it sort of rattled against Sho's ear. Sho moved so he was lying cheek-flat against the bar again, making anguished noises he was well-aware probably sounded ridiculously pathetic.

"I can't just talk to Jun! Jun is- oh god, what if he thinks I am interested? What if he doesn't? What if he thinks I'm creepy? Have you seen the way his hair flips over the collar of his shirt, it's so cute- gah! See, I do things like that! I shouldn't even work here, I shouldn't be allowed near people, ever."

Sho smacked his palms a few times against the bar. "This is so awful, this is terrible. Every time I get around Jun I can't think of anything to say at all and I end up just kind of squeaking. Like a mouse! Like a slut-mouse. Do you think I'm a slut-mouse?"

"Not really," was the answer.

Sho wailed into the counter, shoulders smacking into the side. "I'm a slut-mouse!"

He reached for his glass before remembering that he'd already finished it. "The rum's gone."

"I don't think you need anymore rum."

"Listen, you... you!" Sho cried, jerking upwards to glare at the figure behind the bar. "I will not have anyone- oh my god Ohno what are you doing here?!"

Ohno smiled and gave him a little wave, one hand cleaning out a martini shaker with a no-longer-white towel. "Hi, Sho."

Sho wanted to cry. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Since the shift change," Ohno replied, like it was terribly obvious. "I think you should talk to Jun."

Sho's forehead hit the counter again, and he moaned, though truth be told he couldn't really feel the pain he knew had to follow the motion. "But you think I'm easy."

"Not really," Ohno said. "I also don't know what a slut-mouse is, but it sounds kind of bad, and I don't think that you are bad."

Sho sniffed a little. "Really?"

"Really. I think you should talk to Jun."

"But when I try, nonsense comes out," Sho said. The edges of his vision were starting to get kind of fuzzy around the edges, like a movie that was projecting out of focus onto a screen. He tried to ignore this, but it was difficult.

"Well, that's mostly what happens with you anyway, right?" Ohno laughed.

"Oh," Sho said, confused. "Yeah. Right!"

Sho stood up, shakily. The room really was spinning; maybe they'd flipped over in the water. Maybe it was the Poseidon Adventure, but really happening!

"So you'll talk to Jun?" Ohno asked.

"Yes!" Sho exclaimed, and put one hand into the air, and then promptly passed out.

\--

His supervisor had little sympathy for him so Jun was working breakfast in Paradise the following morning. The ship would be putting in at a port of call by noon, so they had to get everyone fed first. Though Jun had pleaded to be given anything but bussing duties (a strong hint that he’d wash dishes in the kitchen), he was refilling water glasses and replacing dropped forks.

Nino hadn’t come back to their room until after 2:00 in the morning, making those little complain-y noises under his breath that roused Jun from a perfectly nice dream about making his first carbonara. It seemed that Jun’s problem customer from the night before would be Nino’s problem for the next two weeks – he should probably pity his roommate.

He was getting place settings down for a new group of guests when he felt a strong thump on his shoulder. He didn’t even have to turn around to know who it was. “Hey Jim! Gotta question for ya.”

He was Jim now, huh? The napkin rings clattered in his fingers as he turned. “Mr. Nagase, welcome back to Paradise.”

The rock-star was wearing an eye-sore of a t-shirt. It was American flag tie-dyed with an eagle bursting out of a pick-up truck’s windshield. Nagase had clearly ripped off the sleeves himself to show off his arms. It might have been the ugliest shirt Jun had ever seen – and he worked on a cruise ship, for god’s sake.

“Gotta problem in my room, hoping you could help me.”

He frowned. “Mr. Nagase, I work here. In the dining room. Have you discussed your problem with your cabin attendant?”

“Oh Cascading?” Cascading, Jun wondered. How do you get Cascading out of Kazunari? “Yeah, I had him run an errand for me. So can you help?”

“Um. Not really, I’m sorry.”

Nagase was undeterred, putting an arm around his shoulder. “Come on, Jim. You have to know where they’re keeping it.”

“Keeping what?”

“You know,” Nagase whispered. “The dynamite.”

Jun was puzzled, worming his way out of the large man’s grip to fiddle with some spoons. He wanted to at least look like he was working. “We don’t keep dynamite on board to my knowledge.”

“Course you do. What happens if you get raided by pirates? You can’t surrender. You can never surrender to pirates, Jim! Go down with your ship. Blow it to smithereens.”

“We won’t be raided by pirates,” Jun assured him. And if they did, it was Captain Kimura’s problem, not Jun’s. Nagase followed him through the dining room, staying by his elbow while he tried to do some orange juice refills for table sixteen.

“Trade secret, I get that. But you see, man, I locked one of my Almond Joys in my room safe, and I forgot the combo.”

Jun added the juice glasses to a tray. “And you think dynamite’s the right solution, huh?”

“Shit yeah.”

“For a candy bar?”

“They’ve got nuts. Mounds don’t.”

He was quickly losing his patience. At least the man hadn’t tried to do a shot off of him this time though. “Mr. Nagase, I’m a little busy doing my actual job right now, but here’s a plan. You find your cabin attendant.” Sorry Nino, he thought. “Have him get someone from the purser’s office to get your safe open.”

“So you’re saying I should go find Cascading?”

“That is exactly what I’m saying.”

Nagase grinned. “He’s running five miles on the treadmill at the gym for me. I didn’t have time to exercise this morning. Nice kid. Thanks again!”

As Nagase headed off, Jun tried to imagine his roommate running at the gym on the Akai Deck in the rocker’s place. No, Nino wasn’t that stupid. He delivered the juices and headed for the kitchen, sending Nino a quick text.

Nagase looking 4 dynamite. Broke room safe. Good luck.

He shoved his phone back in his pocket and headed out to complete the remainder of his shift. Shun was hurrying with a tub full of dirty plates.

“Your friend was back, huh?”

“Shut up.”

\--

Sho's head was ringing something awful before he reached the suite door, and he had a feeling in his stomach- one of those churning, roiling, gut-wrenching feelings- like it was only going to get worse. He contemplated this as he stood outside with his hand poised in the air to knock, wondering for a moment if he was going to be sick all over the patterned hall carpet.

After rapping his knuckles against the door, he waited a few moments before it opened to reveal a giant-sized man wearing a towel around his neck and a floral-printed Speedo.

"Gaah!" Sho moaned, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. The bathing suit left so little to the imagination. "Mr. Nagase? I'm- I'm from the purser's office. Your cabin attendant requested that someone come up here and help you get your room safe open."

Sho made a mental note to kill Nino later for texting him. This was Aiba's VIP, so why hadn't Aiba been assigned to this?

"Oh, right," Nagase said, face clearing, and he ushered Sho inside with a smack to Sho's shoulder that resounded in aches throughout his whole body. He also nearly tripped on the man's luggage as he made his way inside, because it was lying all over the floor. "Well, I put a candy bar in there to test how safe it was, in case we got boarded or something."

"Boarded?" Sho asked, jaw agape.

Nagase waved his hand in the air. "Well, it's a good thing I did, cause now I can't get it open. And I tried a couple of methods, but the truth is, I have a very valuable and important artifact that I need kept safe for me in case of emergencies, like pirates, or the Bermuda Triangle."

Nagase pushed Sho towards the far wall where the oak cabinets were built into the wall, jutting right up against the (supposedly soothing) beige paint on the walls. The safe was there, between two sets of tall shelves.

"Sir," Sho started, peering closer and feeling his head get woozy, "there are claw marks all over this safe. What did you try to use to open it?"

"A screwdriver, the toilet plunger, my machete-"

"Why do you have a machete on board the ship?" Sho cried. Then he blinked and peered closer still. "Did- did you try to bite this? Mr. Nagase, did you use your teeth to try to open this?"

Nagase smacked his ass with the towel he was holding, and Sho yelped. "Yeah, that didn't work either. Listen, I need to get going, but since that safe is obviously not up to my standards, think you boys at the Handbag Office could store something for me?"

"Purser's Desk," Sho quietly corrected him.

"Crescentroll said that you'd be able to keep something safe."

Sho's temples were throbbing. He put a hand on the wall to keep himself upright, and his fingers were trembling against the paintjob.

"Kid, you don't look so good," Nagase said, much too close to Sho's personal space. "And I've seen this look before- hung over as shit, right? Here, I've got just the remedy for that."

He pushed Sho's shoulders until Sho was sitting on the side of the bed, and Sho was feeling a bit too nauseated and weak to really protest against the movement. He sat with his head in his hands listening to the clinks and pings of Nagase creating something by the mini-bar, and then when the noises stopped, there was a glass in front of his face with a murky looking liquid inside.

"Drink up."

Sho wanted to sniff it, but immediately thought better; all the hangover cures that Ohno knew were some of the most foul-smelling concoctions on the planet. He plugged his nose and took a long gulp, only to choke and cough and nearly spit it all back out.

It burned.

"What-" was all he got out before his stomach- or maybe his head, or better yet, maybe both- began screaming in protest, and the half hour he'd spent on the bathroom floor that morning became crystal clear in the forefront of his mind once more.

"My own recipe," Nagase said proudly, tapping the rim of the glass. "Best thing to cure a hangover is more liquor! So there's some rum, some scotch, some whiskey, some-"

Sho shoved the glass into the man's hands and bolted for the bathroom door, slamming it shut behind him. He didn't even try to comprehend why there were rose petals leading up to the toilet.

A couple minutes later as he was half-collapsed against the bathtub, there was a knock at the door.

"Yo, Murse dude, you okay?"

Sho wanted very badly to cry, but he knew better than to start when he was slumped over the toilet in the VIP's suite. "I texted someone else from the Purser's Desk, they will be up any minute to help you out."

"You want some more of this drink, or can I finish it?"

Sho responded with an anguished moan.

"Alright, I hear ya," Nagase said through the door. He was largely silent for the next few minutes, which Sho took as a bad sign. When he felt like he might be able to move around without tossing his cookies again, he stood up and splashed some cold water on his face.

Aiba was already there as Sho opened the bathroom door and stepped out into the bedroom once more, working on the safe with a rather intricate looking tool that Sho was pretty sure the Purser's Desk didn't have on hand.

"Oh, yes, Mr. Nagase," the other man was chatting happily while prying the front of the safe open, "we have some very state of the art safes down at our desk, and we would be more than happy to store anything you might need to protect there."

Aiba looked up, noticed Sho, and made a concerned face while cocking his head to one side. "Sho, you look terrible."

"Thank you," Sho replied.

"Party hardy, right?" Nagase laughed, and gave Sho another joint-bashing slap to the back. Sho tried willing himself to be anywhere but where he was standing, and it didn't work. Aiba did, however, manage to get the safe to pop open with a light sucking noise, and proudly grabbed the Almond Joy bar from inside.

"Ta-da!"

Nagase grabbed for it, tearing the wrapping open and eating it with a face that looked a little too much like an orgasm face to be comfortable watching. "Great. Man, that hit the spot. Okay, Handbag dudes, I need you to keep Sadie safe for me."

Sho blinked at Aiba, who seemed equally confused. "Mr. Nagase, pets are supposed to be declared once you board so we can make special arrangements for them..."

"Not a pet!" Nagase cried. He looked slightly offended. "Sadie is my most prized possession, the reason I can sing before concerts. I need you to keep her safe in case some crazy hooligans decide to steal her."

"Uh..." Sho tried.

Nagase moved to the dresser and pulled out a silk scarf wrapped around a velvet fabric scrap wrapped around what appeared to be an old Led Zeppelin t-shirt. Inside was a guitar strap that looked kind of old and like it could use a good wash-down, but in no way special. Nagase held it like a revered holy artifact, his touches gentle.

"This is Sadie," he said, voice suddenly low.

"Why Sadie?" Aiba asked.

Nagase looked towards the ceiling, sniffing like there was something caught in his throat. "First girl whose heart I ever broke."

"Oh-kay," Sho said. His vision was getting hazy again, and his torso felt oddly hot. "So you want us to keep Sadie at the Purser's Desk for you?"

"In the biggest, safest, most elaborate safe you have," Nagase said very seriously.

He put the guitar strap back in the t-shirt, then rewrapped it in the velvet and the silk. When the preparation was complete, he handed the bundle to Aiba. "Keep it secret, keep it safe."

"I will, Gandalf!" Aiba beamed.

Sho thought maybe he was going to pass out again. "Ugh. Let's go. I need to lay down."

They left the VIP suite with Nagase's call of "Lay off the hooch!" echoing through the corridor behind them.


	3. Chapter 3

It was nice and sunny, and the ship was docked at Cozumel. They were stopping in Mexico for the first bit, then once they hit the Caribbean they’d be at sea until they hit Grand Cayman and Jamaica. At sea again til the Virgin Islands then back for a day at the Bahamas before back in Miami.

Ohno knew the route pretty well, though he didn’t get to leave the boat much to enjoy their stops. Not like he’d sit and read at the beach or visit the tourist trap shops. They did have a fishing day trip scheduled as an off-boat excursion in Cayman, so maybe if he begged and pleaded with his supervisor he’d get to go too.

But for now, they were in Cozumel and most of the passengers had gone ashore for the day. There were always folks who chose not to spend the money though, so they stayed on board. He was at the Coconut Cabana on the lido deck this afternoon, and he was enjoying getting out and into the fresh air.

Working Coconut Cabana was ideal. The bar was situated in the middle of the adults only Party Pool, so he got to sit in his trunks and pour drinks to the people that swam up to him. He got to enjoy the sunshine and get some color, and he kind of liked the way his skin shriveled. The only problem was that the tip jar stayed empty since, well, who was carrying money in their swimsuits?

He heard some splashing as he served a Sex on the Beach to someone’s grandma. Ohno had liked the way she’d giggled when placing her drink order, so he’d given her a little more alcohol than the recipe called for. Masaki popped his head over the bar countertop.

“Satoshi.”

He smiled. Aiba never went anywhere without his nametag. Even now, even when he was in swim trunks, he had his nametag around his neck on a chain. “Hi Masaki, how are ya? Can I fix you something?”

Aiba shook his head. “Sorry. On the clock.”

Ohno shrugged, grabbing one of the coconut-shaped old fashioned glasses and pouring some pineapple juice in it. He set it down in front of his dripping wet friend. “How’s your roommate?”

Ohno hadn’t heard from Sho since that nasty night where Sho had called himself a slut-hamster or something, and he was worried. Even though they were done (too different), Ohno still liked Sho a lot and thought he was a nice guy. Sho liked to take care of people, and usually when Ohno was working Coconut Cabana, Sho would put some sunscreen in a little remote control boat and send it over to the bar until Ohno agreed to put some on. It had been hard to sit at the bar and watch him destroy his liver for no good reason.

Aiba sipped the juice gratefully. “He’s…kind of grouchy.” Masaki was thumping his foot nervously against the part of the bar structure that was under the water, raising up bubbles on Ohno’s side. Aiba hadn’t come here to talk about Sho, that much was clear.

“Well, how are you?”

He watched Aiba nibble on the end of the straw.

“Masaki?”

He then watched Aiba take a really big breath, hands squeezing the bar top.

“Hey Satoshi, say that you’re given a really important task, I mean real important, no, I mean super mega incredibly important, like you could lose your job if you screw up important? And say that somehow, between being assigned that task and getting to the cafeteria in time for curry night, you lose something that is part of that really important task, like, you had it and then you remember getting somewhere with it but then suddenly you’re all ‘oh wait, it’s curry night, I can’t be here, I have to make sure I get down there because you know that there’s some crazy hungry people who will take it all’ so you go to curry night, and wow, it was so good, so you’re full and you’re happy. Then you go back to make sure that you’ve still got that important something and that it’s where you left it? But all of a sudden, hey, that important thing is gone! And you totally remember it being in this one place, but hey, maybe it got moved, but since you were supposed to still be on duty and most definitely not at curry night, you can’t exactly say ‘Hey Mr. Kusanagi, you know that one thing I left here? Where did it go?’ because Mr. Kusanagi already thinks you’re kind of an idiot, but really, you’re not, you’re just occasionally forgetful at really important, essential times. So you can’t tell your boss and boy, you can’t tell Sho, because he’s just going to flip out and you just hate the way his voice gets all screechy when he’s pissed off and you have to share a tiny room with him already, and you don’t need him to be mad, so who are you supposed to tell? So you go, okay, maybe you should calm down and start looking, so you check every safe in the purser’s office, but you know this thing was wrapped in silk and a t-shirt and stuff and you haven’t found that at all, so then you go ‘oh no, it was wrapped in a t-shirt, maybe the laundry lady came and got it’ but then you realize you don’t have time to go down to the laundry room because it’s all steamy and hot there and you’re supposed to be on duty, so a few hours go by and you’re freaking out, and then your shift is over.”

Masaki took another breath, and Ohno was about to go into brain overload from the sheer amount of information just related.

“So Satoshi, what should I…I mean, what would you do?”

Ohno saw a little kid in an inflatable dragon inner tube come floating by, eyes wide, and he waved him away. “Adults only, little guy!” The kid reluctantly floated away, staring at Aiba like he had three heads. Hopefully he wouldn’t be telling his parents what he’d just overheard.

Ohno pondered Aiba’s dilemma, taking a sip of his own pineapple juice. “So you’re saying you lost something?”

Aiba was looking close to tears. “Oh I’m in so much trouble! I had Sadie, and now I’ve lost her and…”

“Wait, is it a cat? We could look for a cat…”

“No, it’s a…you know what, I should be looking, not swimming.”

Ohno caught Aiba by his wrist before he could float away from the Coconut Cabana. “You lost something that belongs to a passenger?”

Aiba nodded. “Temporarily misplaced, but yes.”

“Aren’t you working with Nino?”

“Well…yes I am but…”

He smiled. “Then you and Nino should go looking for it. You’re supposed to be a team, right?”

“He’s going to think I’m an idiot.”

He poured some more pineapple juice into Aiba’s coconut glass. “So what? The passengers take priority, so just work together. I can help when my shift’s done if you want?”

Aiba looked grateful and downed the pineapple juice before shoving away from the bar and kicking into a clumsy backstroke. “You’re the best.”

Well, he’d finish his shift and then search for the…whatever it was Aiba had misplaced. Ohno heard another splash. It was the kid in the dragon inner tube. He saw that look – he’d worked in Coconut Cabana long enough to know that look.

“No! No, kid, don’t you dare pee in here!”

\--

Jun didn’t really expect tips for bussing, but they were definitely appreciated. The passengers had already paid for the food, and usually ate more than what their money would have bought on shore, so was it too much to ask for a dollar here and there? With the increasingly incompetent people they hired to bring out food, it was usually Jun the passengers called on to freshen drinks, send something back to the kitchen or get new silverware.

He had an hour before the dinner rush would start, and the coins were jingling in the pocket of his slacks. Jun liked tips – but he preferred them to be in a currency he’d at least heard of before. There were things with a 1 on them that had corn, some with a 5 that had…coconuts? Either way, he’d never seen these things before. Hopefully they’d be able to change it in the purser’s office.

When he came in the door, he saw Sho was behind the counter, and the guy nearly jumped in the air when Jun approached.

“Jun, how are you?” Sho asked him, and Jun had never heard a grown man’s voice get so squeaky before.

It was obvious to everyone, Jun included, that Sho Sakurai in the purser’s office liked him. However, it was obvious to everyone BUT Sho that Jun was aware of it.

Sho was a nice guy, a decent guy. He was good at his job, and since Jun was kind of a perfectionist when it came to his work, he admired that in Sakurai. Jun wasn’t exactly big on workplace romance (it got in the way of work after all) but he wouldn’t be averse to getting to know Sho a bit better. The only thing standing in the way was…well, Sho himself.

For one thing, he had a hard time looking Jun in the eye without breaking into a rather adorable sweat.

He took the coins out of his pockets and set them down on the counter. “Some old lady gave me this as my tip today. Any idea what these are?”

“Let me check,” came the even squeakier reply, and Jun grinned at the way Sho’s hands were positively trembling as he picked up one of the coconut coins. “Says Tonga on here.”

“That mean tongue in Spanish or Portuguese or something?”

Something in Sho’s face changed. He knew something. He knew something that Jun didn’t and now he was going to show off. Sho started typing something in the computer, eyes flicking back and forth madly at the monitor as Jun tapped one of the coins against the counter.

“Tonga’s a country,” Sho informed him. “A group of islands in the South Pacific.”

“How do you know that?”

Sho was still sweating, but his eyes were almost sparkling. “I have a world map on the wall in my cabin. I’m trying to memorize it.”

Jun tried not to let the nerdiness of Sho’s statement deter him from liking the guy. He leaned forward, elbows on the counter, and Sho gulped. It was kind of fun to tease him. It was a welcome break from the old ladies who would drop their silverware on purpose in the dining room just so he’d bend over to pick it up. “So what’s the currency in Tonga called?”

Sho’s fingers were dancing over the keyboard again, and he turned the screen to him. The purser’s database had an entry on every type of currency they changed. “The Tongan pa’anga. But the coinage are in seniti.”

“That’s great.” He put his fingers on the remaining coins and slid them across the counter some more. “Rare?”

“Um, well, rare to find in this part of the world.” Sho was sweating again.

Jun pressed onward, picking up the corn coin and tapping it against Sho’s forearm. “So how much can you give me for these?”

“We…I…let me check.” Sho pulled his arm away and was typing, his eyes moving back and forth to count the coins.

There was an off-boat snorkeling tour in Jamaica – with his employee discount and whatever money he made from these coins he’d be all set and-

“Fourteen cents.”

He dropped the corn coin. He had to have set down at least thirty coins on the counter. “What?”

Sho tapped the monitor with his index finger. “Here’s the current exchange rate from Tongan pa’anga to U.S. dollars. This is worth fourteen cents.”

He scowled. “But you said this was rare.”

“Well, more like rare in that I’ve never seen them in person before.” Sho was even more embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Jun…I can’t change the exchange rate. I…I could maybe give you fifteen cents? Sixteen? I don’t want Mr. Kusanagi to find out though…”

Cheapskate passengers, paying him in useless currency. No snorkeling. No way to get off the boat. No break from tablecloths and silverware. And still no chance at working in the kitchen. He laid his head down on the counter, muffling his voice. “Forget it.”

“Um, sorry,” Sho replied, and Jun felt the guy gingerly patting his head. It was kind of nice, actually.

Well. If he wouldn’t go snorkeling, maybe he could spend his off-time with Sho. Hell, maybe he could use the tiny shared kitchen by employee quarters and have Sho be a guinea pig for his recipes. Nino never wanted to try anything. He looked up, ready to see if Sho would pee himself at the offer of a date, but he didn’t get a chance because Sho had already snatched his hand away and was blushing furiously as the office door opened.

Great.

Nino and Aiba walked in, the two of them nearly colliding with him at the counter. “Oh,” Aiba mumbled. “Sho, forgot you were on duty.”

When Jun wasn’t Sho’s focus, he was a different person. “Masaki, I always work this shift.”

Nino was already heading for the door. Why the hell was he here? Didn’t he have to make sure Nagase wasn’t drowning somewhere? “He always works this shift, Aiba, let’s come back later.”

The two of them were being super suspicious. Were they on some creepy errand from Nagase? Maybe Jun could give the guy all his worthless Tongan money. “If I’m in the way,” he said to Aiba, “you know, don’t let me interrupt purser’s office business.”

“Purser’s office business,” Aiba repeated before throwing the lock on the door and falling to his knees in a fit of rather creepy giggles.

Jun gave Nino an inquisitive look, but Nino wouldn’t meet his eyes. Sho came around the counter, face immediately panicking. “Masaki,” Sho said. “Masaki, this is not a good laugh.”

Nino looked shifty. “Which is why I’ll get him back to his cabin. Come on, get up.”

But Aiba wasn’t moving, rocking back and forth and laughing. Sho prodded him with his shoe. “Did you screw something up? Please say you didn’t screw something up.”

“I didn’t screw something up. Okay, that’s a lie,” Aiba admitted, and suddenly, Jun wanted to be far, far away from the purser’s office. The last thing he needed was to get tied up in some mess that had nothing to do with him. However, Nino was standing in the doorway blocking his exit, fingers drumming against his uniform slacks in his nervousness.

Sho crouched down and gave Aiba a shake. “What did you do?”

Nino interrupted immediately. “He’ll give you the long version, believe me, don’t ask him to…”

Aiba started blabbing anyway. “Well, it all started with curry night last night. I mean, you love curry too, right Sho? Oh man, and they had so many different spices in it. So I thought, hey, I’ll just sneak away for twenty minutes…”

“Wait, you left during your shift last night?” Sho screeched.

“…just twenty minutes, so I could have sworn I left Sadie on the counter here…”

“Sadie?” Jun wondered. Why was Aiba leaving a woman on the purser’s office counter?

“…and when I came back…Sho, I swear to you, I wasn’t gone for more than twenty minutes…”

Nino crouched down and pushed his hand over Aiba’s mouth, muffling him. “Look, he lost Tomoya Nagase’s most prized possession, and we’re trying to find it.”

Sho looked like he was going to faint, Nino looked irritated, and Aiba…well, Aiba was still trying to talk, little noises still emerging from behind Nino’s hand. This was bad. This was very very VERY bad.

But dinner was starting in half an hour – he had to go. If only he’d just taken the fourteen freaking cents Sho had offered. “Well, I have work to do…”

Nino’s other hand clamped down around Jun’s ankle. “If you tell anyone about this, I will kill you in your sleep.” And from the look in his roommate’s eyes, Jun believed him. “You’re helping us.”

“Why should I have to? It’s his fault!” he cried, pointing to Aiba…but then Aiba’s eyes filled with tears, and Jun’s heart melted just a bit. He wasn’t exactly in the mood to cart messy plates around. He could trade Shun for the breakfast shift the next morning, let the guy sleep in a bit. “Fine. I’ll help. Just let me call my friend.”

He stepped out of the purser’s office and sent a text to Shun, wondering if he could just get off the boat here and now and walk home from Cozumel.

\--

"Okay," Sho said, very seriously, back against the door as he finished taping his makeshift sign to it, allowing Ohno to slip through the opening just before flipping the lock over. "Now, start from the beginning. Where did you say you left Sadie?"

"Right here!" Aiba all but wailed. He put his palms flat on the purser's desk and looked down in abject misery at the countertop. "I swear, I swear, I left her right here-"

Nino groaned. His day was already far too long, and he was far too tired to deal with this. Nagase was going to have his head- or maybe he'd chop of Nino's balls first. Either way, one of them was going to lose their job if this news broke to the staff, and Nino was hell-bent on making sure that didn't happen. "First of all, can we stop referring to the guitar strap as 'her'? It's an inanimate object."

Ohno was already poking around at a few files, and Sho swatted his hands a bit.

"Well, she was wrapped in a silk cloth and then in a velvet one, I think," Aiba rambled, "and then in an old Led Zippo t-shirt!"

"Zeppelin," Ohno corrected mildly.

Aiba started. "What's a zeppelin?"

"It's a hot air- you know what, nevermind," Sho said. "It doesn't matter. What we need you to do is retrace your steps and show us exactly what you did and where you put Sadie. I'm sure this is all just a big misunderstanding."

"Okay," Aiba said. He took a deep breath, and started moving his arms in some sort of weird yoga poses that Nino was quite sure the man was completely botching. But Nino felt bad; Nagase was his charge, and Aiba really shouldn't have had to take care of anything for him.

Damned Tegoshi and his whoring ways- it was the worst time ever for the man to come down with a venereal disease.

"Okay," Aiba repeated, making his way to the far side of the purser's desk. "I came in with Sadie, and Sho went to his room because he had a really bad hangover-"

"I did tell you to stop taking those shots," Ohno said, concerned, poking at Sho's cheek.

"Can we please stay on subject here?" Nino exclaimed.

Aiba was still babbling, undeterred. "And then I put Sadie here and thought that I would stick her in the safe later, because I wanted to get down for curry night."

"Okay," Jun stopped him. "So everybody start looking right here."

Nino began pulling open drawers, highlighters flying every which way with the force of his movements. His phone on his hip buzzed once and he ignored it- if it was Nagase, he would have to get to it later, preferably with good news about the safety of his beloved guitar strap. If it was anyone else, he was probably never going to return the text, because he had far more important and demanding things to be doing.

It took about three seconds for the mobile to buzz again. Definitely Nagase.

"Crap," Aiba said, looking crestfallen as Nino pulled his phone out of his belt holster. "That's him, isn't it? Did he mention Sadie at all? Oh god, he knows already, doesn't he?"

"Hey Kangaroo," Nino read, "way any get chocolate syrup bedsheets?"

There was a moment of silence in the small office, and Jun snorted, blowing his bangs up and out of his eyes a bit. "The hell?"

The phone buzzed again in Nino's palm, the small envelope icon alighting once more, and Nino pressed the green key with perhaps more force than was necessary.

"Also," he spat, "pruning sheers cut wire y/n, 10-4, good buddy."

"I don't even want to know what is going on," Sho moaned, hands deep into piles and piles of what looked to be long since past due log reports and unfiled paperwork.

Nino slammed the drawers shut with his hip. "Nothing here."

"Not here, either," Jun announced from the other side of the room. Aiba looked about ready to burst into tears, and Nino didn't particularly like the way that thought made his stomach twist, so he put a hand up.

"It's okay," he said, mostly for Aiba's benefit, and it seemed to work; at least the man only sniffled a little and Nino couldn't see any tears escaping out of the corners of his eyes. "Maybe someone picked it up thinking it was something else- like something a passenger had lost."

Ohno held up the 'Lost & Found' box and promptly dumped it out on the floor. There were six sets of car keys, two pairs of headphones, a sock with a hole in the toe, a hot pink booklight, and a bikini top, but no guitar strap wrapped in a Led Zeppelin t-shirt (though Nino was very curious to know how one lost only a bikini top and not the bottom).

"Okay," Nino said again, struggling to remain calm. "Maybe housekeeping picked it up."

"Housekeeping?" Sho asked. "You mean- oh. Maybe they thought it was laundry?"

Ohno perked a bit. "Maybe they thought it was Mr. Kusanagi's and went to go clean it up for him? Is he a big classic rock fan?"

"He listens almost exclusively to Kenny G," Sho replied.

"No dice," Ohno said, sadly.

Jun picked up the lost bikini top and examined it with an expression of distaste, one lip curling upwards. "Well, maybe they thought it was dirty and took it to laundry anyway."

Nino watched Sho for a few seconds, who was watching Jun handle the bedazzled garment with slightly pink cheeks and a put-out look on his face. It was amusing enough that Nino forgot for a few seconds that he had lost the prized possession of his biggest VIP client. Then reality came crashing down again, and he reached forward to snatch the fabric from Jun's hands. "Can we focus and stop dallying with women's swimwear? No breasts to be fondled here."

"I wasn't-" Jun started, cheeks heating, and Nino just waved him silent once more.

"We need to split up," he said. "Start checking around where it could have been taken- but no one says anything, got it? The last thing we need is for Mr. Kusanagi or Ryo to catch wind of this, because then it'll be all our asses."

"But it was Aiba who lost it," Jun pointed out, "and your client. So why would the three of us get in trouble?"

Aiba looked on the verge of a breakdown once again, and it was making Nino's chest clench. He stood up and stuck his finger in Jun's face, trying to draw up all of his height (and maybe going up on his toes, just a bit- totally not cheating).

"You tattle on us to anyone to save your own hide and I'll make sure you go down with us with all the power I have in me," Nino hissed. "I know where you sleep."

When he turned around, Aiba was beaming. "My hero!"

"Two of us go to laundry," he continued. "And the rest of us start looking around in some other random locations like the lobby or the bar, whatever is close by. Start near and then spread out."

No one said anything for a long moment, and then Sho kicked at the overturned lost and found box with his toe.

"Today sucks," he sighed.

\--

"Ugh," Jun commented, as he pulled out something that might have resembled a shirt at one point from a pile of dirty laundry in the porter's laundry area. "Why can't people do this themselves?"

"They are on vacation?" Ohno pointed out. Jun just rolled his eyes and continued digging. Ohno was up to his elbows in garments but kept one eye on the door just in case- he knew the guy assigned to laundry duty, and he didn't particularly want to run into him when they were obviously going through the guests' clothing without permission.

So far, he hadn't seen anything resembling a Led Zeppelin t-shirt.

He had found some underwear that might have once belonged to a member of Led Zeppelin, though.

They worked in silence for several moments, sorting through boxer-briefs and children's nightgowns and old ladies' sundresses. To Ohno's right, Jun was looking slightly shifty; he kept glancing back at Ohno like he had something he sort of wanted to say, and then kept thinking better of it and focusing back on the dirty laundry he was wading through again.

"Do you-" Jun said, at the same moment that Ohno started with, "So you know-"

They both stopped and looked at each other. Ohno just raised his eyebrows, and Jun coughed awkwardly.

"You first," Jun said.

"Oh," Ohno said. He pulled up a pair of swim trunks with several holes in very inappropriate places. "It was nothing, really."

He was fairly certain he shouldn't actually say anything to Jun about Sho. But Sho's weird drunk rodent analogy had seemed to upset him quite badly, and Ohno didn't know how to make that one better. He didn't care if Sho asked Jun out- he liked Sho, but not really in that way anymore. More like he liked his friends and his second-favorite cousin Vinny.

Jun didn't look convinced. "I mean, if you have something to say, you can say it."

"Well," Ohno thought for a moment. "It's just that-"

"Hey!" came an annoyed voice from the hallway, and Ohno's heart dropped down to his stomach. The porter stormed inside, snatching a pair of lacy (and quite large) women's underpants from Ohno's hands. "What the hell are you two doing in here?!"

"Erm," Jun sputtered out, and Nakai, whom Ohno didn't particularly care for, because he was always getting up in people's faces and making silly accusations like he was trying to pick fights, leveled them both with a glare.

"Are you guys some kind of perverts or something?" Nakai asked, stomping one foot against the ground. "Get out of here before I rub my butt on your pillow cases before I give them back to you!"

He rather violently pushed Jun and Ohno out of the laundry room and slammed the door shut behind them. Ohno looked helplessly at Jun and shrugged a bit. "Well, I didn't see the guitar strap."

"No," Jun said, disgusted, "but I've seen enough jock straps to last me a lifetime. I am never doing that again."

It was probably for the best. Besides, now Ohno was going to have to dispel rumors that he was hoarding granny panties for his own nefarious purposes, and he figured he was going to have his hands full.

\--

Aiba was beginning to think that this was a Very Bad Idea.

Not that he hadn't thought that earlier, but there was no sign of Sadie in the lobby or behind the bar (though there were some nice stores that the bartenders were hoarding from them that he very much wanted to get his hands on again), and they'd moved onto the small sitting lounge next to the Shakespeare Library.

"Why would it even be here?" Sho was complaining, looking beneath stacks of newspapers that guests hadn't bothered to fold back up again.

"Because it could be anywhere," Nino shot back, "and we have to check everything before we begin panicking."

Aiba sniffed despondently. "I'm already panicking!"

Neither responded, probably because they knew it was true, and Aiba began rummaging through some magazine racks hoping to see a splash of silk or velvet or the gaudy colors of the Led Zeppelin shirt between Outdoor Life and RV Living.

Nino's phone vibrated loudly, and he grabbled for it with a muttered curse.

"What up," he read aloud, "need hot in sauna, 10 mins naked."

Sho just stared at him. Aiba had never really noticed that Nino had a nervous tick in his left eye before, but it was visible across the lounge. "What?"

"I don't even know what this means," Nino moaned, shoving his mobile back in the holder with more force than he needed to use.

"Do you think Nagase could kill me with his bare hands?" Aiba asked sadly. He gazed down at the old issue of InTouch in his hands.

"Yes," both Nino and Sho said at the same time. It didn't make Aiba feel any better. He was just about to say something else when he heard a familiar voice carrying across the second floor hall: Mr. Kusanagi. If he found them there, he'd ask what they were doing, and Aiba didn't think he could come up with anything other than the truth, and then he was going to get fired for sure, and-

Nino grabbed his arm with tight fingers and pulled him back behind one of the curtains, a hand over Aiba's mouth to keep him quiet. Aiba stared wildly at him, but Nino just put a finger over his mouth and listened to the footsteps stalling just outside the lounge doors.

"Now, where was that..." Kusanagi muttered to himself. He came dangerously close to the curtains Nino and Aiba were huddled behind, shoelaces visible under the bottom of the draping folds. Aiba was suddenly overcome with the intense and burning need to sneeze.

Nino shook his head furiously at him, and Aiba tried to swallow it back.

"Did I leave it here?" Kusanagi continued, and his feet moved away from the window though they paused again in the middle of the room, and Aiba could still hear the man clicking his tongue against his teeth in thought. "Or did I put it over there...?"

He was going to sneeze. He was going to sneeze. It was prickling his eyes, he was going to sneeze-

"Aha!" Kusanagi announced. "Vie au Soleil, there you are!"

He left the lounge and they tumbled out from behind the curtain as soon as he was gone, Aiba sneezing violently into his hands.

"Jesus," Sho whimpered, falling out from behind one of the large floral-print chairs in the corner. "I thought for sure we were done for."

"Come on," Nino said, hauling Aiba back to his feet again and ignoring the tears streaming down Aiba's face (the sneeze had been a very powerful one). "It's not here, and we're wasting time. We've got to figure something out. Maybe Ohno and Jun found something in the laundry room."

Aiba very much wanted to either drink heavily, hide under his covers, or play a vigorous round of Big Buck Hunter to dispel all the nervous tension in his form, but he followed the other two with a sigh of acceptance- this was of his making, after all, and now he was paying for it.


	4. Chapter 4

The laundry room search had been equally fruitless, although Nino had gotten to see a different side of Ohno when he and Jun met them in the kitchen by their living quarters.

“If it wasn’t for that stupid Nakai interrupting and screeching like a pterodactyl on fire, we might have found it,” Satoshi complained bitterly, his usually calm demeanor absent.

Nino didn’t really want to know what the history between Ohno and the porter was. He’d heard his share of rumors around the ship, and he doubted any of them were true. Some said that Nakai had been Ohno’s trainer at the bar and that Ohno had stolen his job. Others claimed that Ohno had stolen the girl Nakai was interested in once after a pretty elaborate dance-off.

But since Sho was always full of information and all too willing to share, he put an arm around Nino’s shoulder as soon as Ohno headed off for a late night shift.

“Now don’t tell Satoshi I told you this. He just gets mad all over again,” Sho whispered loud enough for Aiba and Jun to hear him perfectly fine. “But it was about a year back on one of our routes to the Bahamas. Satoshi found a CD on the bar and played it over the loudspeakers, thinking it was ambient music. Turns out it was Nakai singing covers of Madonna songs, and he left it at the bar on accident.”

“Nakai can sing?” Jun wondered.

Sho looked grave. “You have never heard anything as horrible as that man trying to sing Like a Virgin.” Nino shuddered at the thought. “But yeah, he holds Ohno responsible, so I guess you could say they’re mortal enemies now.”

Nino still didn’t care that much. He still had Nagase texting him every few minutes in a language that must have been run through Google Translate one too many times. His pocket buzzed again.

“Want snoozy soon Sadie find. And Jager bomb for nightcrap.”

“Nightcrap?” Aiba asked.

“Nightcap,” Nino mumbled. “He wants Sadie, what the hell am I supposed to do?”

Jun held up his hands. “I helped you guys all night, and I have breakfast shift tomorrow…”

Sho also looked shifty. “I really should check in with Mr. Kusanagi…”

Aiba looked desperate. “But…but we still haven’t found it!”

Nino’s phone buzzed again. “Sadie hugs????!” He showed the phone to Aiba, who was sweating. Sho and Jun fled, leaving the two of them alone in the corridor.

“Masaki, what am I going to tell him?”

Aiba was running his hands through his fluffy permed hair, and Nino was starting to worry that the man would start tearing it out before too long. They really hadn’t had time to search the ship. They’d have to stall Nagase, distract him every time he asked for his stupid guitar strap. If they could do that for the next ten days, they’d have time to find it somewhere on the Floating Sakura. Right?

But if they didn’t, he could see himself standing on the dock in Miami holding all his things and crying for his bank account while the ship set sail for its next voyage without him.

His cell phone rang this time and with the Imperial March from Star Wars this time. It was Nagase’s manager – there was no better way to announce the man’s presence than imagining someone’s planet exploding via Death Star.

Aiba started to pace while Nino answered his phone. “Yes, Taichi?”

“Who raised you? That’s Mr. Kokubun, and don’t you forget it. I’m your senior in life, show some respect.”

Nino rolled his eyes. He had more important things to do! “Can I help you?”

“More like can you help Tomoya! He just called me saying you weren’t answering his important text messages, and he was worried you’d fallen overboard! He was this close to swimming with the sharks to find you!”

Nino was oddly touched that Nagase was preparing to dive into the Caribbean for him, but that was only because nobody else on board was going to bring him Jager Bombs before tucking him in at night.

“Sorry, I got held up. Crazy shuffleboard accident, you see,” he lied. “I was just on my way to read Mr. Nagase his bedtime story.”

Taichi seemed to believe him, making little ‘mm-hmm’ approval noises. “Have you finished all the Dr. Seuss ones?”

“Not yet,” Nino said, stepping on Aiba’s foot in hopes of getting him to stop pacing.

“Well, do me a favor and save Green Eggs and Ham for the last night. It’s his favorite, and I’d prefer he end his vacation on a happy note.”

“I can do that, sir.”

“Great, great. Now don’t make me call you again.” Taichi hung up abruptly, and Nino sighed.

Aiba was still squirming, and Nino pressed his shoe down tighter on top of his foot. “So what do we do?” Aiba asked. “You have to read him a bedtime story now?”

“I do.”

“But what if he wants Sadie?”

He smirked, tapping his foot a few times for good measure. “I have an idea.”

\--

“Just move forward. And watch the neck!” Nino was directing him.

The darn thing took up nearly the whole elevator, and Aiba didn’t know how Nino had managed to contort himself to fit in there with him and the giant stuffed giraffe. He had to admit that Nino was kind of clever. The best way to deal with Nagase was to find a way to distract him from what he really wanted with something equally shiny.

Aiba also had to admit that this ploy would have probably worked on him too.

He could barely see around the stuffed giraffe’s backside as he followed the sound of Nino’s voice down the corridor. Nino and Aiba had both volunteered a shift working the kids’ arcade in exchange for the giraffe, which was one of the more coveted skeeball prizes. Working the arcade though was some version of hell, at least that’s what Aiba had heard. But no pain, no gain.

Nino knocked on Nagase’s door. “Mr. Nagase, it’s Kazunari again.”

The door opened, and even though Aiba couldn’t see, Nino’s lack of screaming meant that Nagase was mostly clothed. “Oh Chupacabra, I thought the piranhas were devouring your delicate, youthful flesh!”

Aiba didn’t want to know how Nagase got Chupacabra out of Kazunari. But he heard some strangled noises and peeked under the giraffe’s legs to see that Nagase was hugging Nino.

“Please…Mr. Nagase…my windpipe…”

He wiggled the giraffe a bit. “Look! Look!” Masaki cried. “You’re the grand prize winner!”

Nagase released his kung-fu death grip on Nino and gasped. “This big spotted horse is for me?”

“It’s a giraffe,” Aiba said at the same time Nino said “Absolutely.”

Nagase held the door as Nino dragged and Aiba pushed the giant stuffed animal into the luxurious cabin. Already, Aiba was stepping on paper as he came in. They got the giraffe positioned next to the armoire, and Nagase was staring at it completely mesmerized. No word on Sadie at all, although Aiba worried that they could only get so many giant stuffed animals into the cabin before Nagase asked about his guitar strap again.

Nino was picking up the papers from the floor, and Aiba recognized the colorful drawings. “Mr. Nagase,” Nino inquired, “did you rip up all your Dr. Seuss books?”

Nagase nodded gravely, draping an arm around the giraffe’s neck. “Well, you see, Caterpillar, I thought you were sucked down into Davy Jones’ locker, so I thought, well, I have to tell someone.” He gestured to the desk. “I was trying to write a letter to that effect.”

Aiba followed Nino to the desk. Horton Hears a Who had been completely yanked apart, the binding discarded on the floor. He picked up a page.

“Man in room he gone. Halping?”

Nino looked horrified. “What are you going to read to him tonight?” he asked, elbowing Nino in the side. The giraffe might not have been enough.

“I don’t know,” Nino whispered back, elbowing him in the ribs in return. “I’ll…I’ll do a puppet show with the giraffe, you go grab the first thing you see from the ship’s library, okay?”

Aiba nodded. This was a job he could totally do. Nino would be proud of him and would maybe forgive him a fraction of a percent for screwing up with Sadie. He set off with a smile.

\--

If Aiba didn't hurry up with a magazine ten minutes ago, Nino was going to kill himself. Or Nagase. It was really a toss-up; could go either way. He'd already cleaned up the bits of Dr. Seuss pages that had littered the floor and found some real gems while scooping out the remains from under the bed, including a butter knife, the liner from a bikini top, and a condom wrapper (Nino didn't even go near that one) and had spread out some more rose petals since somehow Nagase kept crushing all the ones he'd already put down with his massive giant feet.

Nagase was just about to go into his story about "the third time he slept with a tranny by mistake" and Nino was eyeing the illegal machete that was sticking out of Nagase's suitcase while trying to determine if he could fall just right on the edge of the blade and make it look like an accident while completely severing his trachea, and then there was a knock at the suite door.

Aiba just blinked happily at him from the other side, fingers clutching around a glossy magazine. "I got you the first one I found."

"Christ," Nino spat, reaching for it, "what did you do, get lost on the way there?"

He glanced at the cover of the magazine as he was turning back around, and then stopped, motions halting abruptly.

"Aiba," he said slowly, "there are breasts on the cover."

He turned to Aiba, holding the Penthouse out in front of him. "Why on earth did you get me this?! I'm supposed to be reading Nagase a bedtime story!"

Aiba just leaned in closer, ignoring absolutely everything Nino was staying to him and pointing up at Nino's face, near his eyebrow. "Are you okay? Your eye is kind of doing this really weird little twitching thing. Did you take your Dramamine? We don't want another repeat of the incident-"

"Yes, I took my Dramamine," Nino growled, and promptly slammed the suite door closed. He stared down at the buxom blonde lady on the cover of the volume, who was holding a lollipop in her mouth in a very provocative fashion and wearing what appeared to be a scrap of extra cloth tied around her hips.

He could already feel a migraine coming on.

Nagase was still talking, mostly to himself, when Nino got back to the bed. "Alright, Mr. Nagase, I've got this wonderful and educating.... work of art, and I'll read you your bedtime story now."

Nino was just settling himself into the chair next to the bed when Nagase waved his hand to stop him.

"Whoa, whoa, Klingon, wait," Nagase said. "Can you get me that spotted cow? I need something to snuggle with. I'm feeling lonely."

Sometimes, Nino had no words. He set the magazine down and crossed the room to grab the giraffe from the chair they'd set it in. It took up half the bed, but Nagase scooted over so it had room, looking blissful. Nino was about to take his seat again.

"Can you tuck me in?" Nagase asked.

Nino stared at him. Nagase just looked up at him with what Nino could only imagine the man thought "puppy dog eyes" looked like, fingers curled around the top of the blankets. "And the cow, too, in case it gets scared during the night?"

Nino made a large show of tucking in the blankets around the stuffed giraffe, which was staring at him with knowing eyes that Nino wanted to rip right out of the fabric. When it appeared Nagase was finally ready to listen to a story, he took his chair again and opened up Penthouse to the reader letters.

"This is by Ronald from New Jersey," Nino read. "Sounds like a real winner."

"Mmm, Jersey," Nagase sighed.

Nino ignored him. "I met this crazy hot chick named Samantha on the Shore, ya know, and she was like super dirty and kinky and shit, right bro? We was going at it like rabbits one night, and she was on top of me riding me reverse cowgirl-"

"Oh, I love that position," Nagase happily supplied, and Nino swallowed down bile enough to manage to choke out an "ew" in reply before he continued.

"She got these great tits, you know, super bouncy and round, and she was touching them all up herself and moaning as she rode my cock like it was a Harley Davidson."

At least Nagase's eyes were closed. Nino wasn't sure if he wanted to throw up the meager dinner he'd eaten that night or go in search of some bleach to pour down his throat. He wondered if swallowing the entire bottle of Nagase's colon cleanse medication would be enough to liquefy all of his internal organs.

"So there I was, balls deep- okay, you know what, let's skip to the next letter," Nino said, hastily turning the page and ignoring the pictures of mostly-naked women with their mouths half-open.

Nagase stirred a little, opening one eye. "Hop on Pop had pictures."

"Well, you destroyed Hop on Pop and the ship doesn't have another copy in the library," Nino replied crossly. "This will have to do."

"But I want to see the pictures. Find me the good pictures."

Nino counted mentally to five as he leafed through pages, trying to calm down his raging temper (and not look at the bed sheets over Nagase because he really, really didn't need to see the man's raging boner- fuck, he looked at the bed sheets). "Fine, fine. How about this? The photoshoot is called 'Naughty Nursemaids'."

He spun the magazine around to show Nagase, who grinned appreciatively. Nino turned to the next page.

"I love landing strips," Nagase sighed.

"Yeah, sure," Nino said. "So does the Navy. Shall I go back to the letters now?"

"Okay," Nagase said, eyelids fluttering closed once more.

Nino really wanted to throw himself off the balcony. "Alright, this letter is from Dean from Lawrence, Kansas. Shitty place in the middle of nowhere, really."

He shifted, glancing at Nagase, who appeared to be perhaps finally settling into sleep.

"Dear Penthouse, I've been with a lotta women in my time," Nino snorted, mumbling a "yeah, sure dude" under his breath a bit, "but I gotta say that it's the stuff you don't notice for the longest time that means more than the girls you can't take your eyes off of when you enter the bar."

A small snore came from the bed, but then stopped, and Nino continued, afraid that his voice dropping off would wake the man again.

"I have a renewed love for the use of feathers in erotic situations now and thought maybe everybody could learn something from it. See, I've got this friend Cass-"

More snores, and heavy, regular breathing, and Nino felt confident enough to close the magazine. Nagase was curled up against the giraffe like a three-year-old with a security blanket, drooling a little bit onto the pillowcase.

"Jesus," Nino swore, setting Penthouse on the bedside table and flicking off the light. He made his way to the door listening to the increasing volume of the snoring behind him and let the portal shut behind him with a resounding click.

He needed a drink.

Or a shotgun.

At this point, he really didn't care which.

\--

Luanda.

Luanda was the capital of Angola. Three syllables, just like the country’s name. Lu-an-da. “Lou and I go to Angola,” he murmured. “Lou and I. Luanda. Luanda.”

Luanda. He readied the push pin to tack onto the world map, indicating another sub-Saharan capital he’d memorized, but Aiba was really throwing his concentration.

“Masaki,” Sho grumbled as Aiba started poking around his bed. “There’s no way you put Nagase’s guitar strap under my pillow.”

“I’m just being thorough,” his roommate claimed, balancing himself against the bunk beds’ ladder to try picking up Sho’s mattress. “I have to find it.”

“Well, it’s not anywhere on my bed, I can assure you.”

Aiba climbed up, worming his way into Sho’s space. He helped himself to a pillow, hugging it close. “Do you think I’m a horrible person?”

Oh no, Aiba was having a self-esteem crisis. Sure, he screwed up a lot at work, but instead of learning from his mistakes and moving on, he was prone to cry and apologize for days about being a burden. Sho didn’t like coming back to their cabin to find a bunch of snotty tissues strewn over their limited floor space.

He patted Aiba on the shoulder, sticking the push pin through Luanda. “You are not a horrible person.”

“But if Nino gets fired, it’ll be my fault.”

“To be fair,” Sho noted, “Nino didn’t misplace Nagase’s cherished possession. I don’t think he’d be culpable.”

“But…but he’s taking on all this responsibility for it,” Aiba whined. “And this is only his second month. He probably won’t sign on with the Floating Sakura again. And then we’ll never see him again!”

People came and went in the cruise industry. Why was Aiba so worried about Nino? Sure, Sho liked him. He was funny and even though he complained about his work, who didn’t? “Nino likes money,” Sho assured him, “I don’t think he’d pick unemployment over the Floating Sakura.”

“Well, I hope you’re right. I’ll give my resignation to Captain Kimura himself if something happens to Nino.”

“Captain Kimura’s not your immediate superior,” Sho reminded him. “I don’t think he has time for you. He’s, you know, busy being the captain?”

Aiba was still sulking. “I don’t care. I don’t want anything bad to happen.”

“Then get off of my bed and go looking around!”

“I don’t know where to look!” Masaki pleaded. “It’s a big boat, you know! If it’s not in the purser’s office and it didn’t get carted off to laundry then maybe it was put with the…”

Since Aiba had stopped talking, Sho looked away from Namibia (Windhoek…get hooked on the wind in Namibia, Windhoek) briefly. “Put with the what?”

“What if it’s with the garbage?”

Sho had his limits. He’d been a good sport thus far, looking through every nook and cranny of the purser’s office and surrounding common areas on that deck. But he was not going to check the trash. “I’m not going to check the trash.”

“But it might be a fun adventure!”

“It’s 2:00 AM, and you’re probably just tired,” Sho muttered.

“It won’t be that smelly.”

“I’ve seen Star Wars, Masaki, and I just know that there will be something slithering around in there trying to kill me. You know,” Sho said, “before we’re crushed to death by the compacter.”

“You know, if you don’t want to come with me, you can just say so,” Aiba said, looking rather hurt.

“I said not thirty seconds ago that I am not going to check the trash with you.”

“Oh.” Aiba handed him another push pin. “Sorry.”

“Go to sleep, you’re working the morning shift, aren’t you?”

Aiba nodded, heading back for the ladder. “I won’t be able to focus until I find it!”

He nudged Aiba with his foot, encouraging him to go down the rungs. “You’re the one who wanted this responsibility. If you want Mr. Kusanagi to take you seriously, then take your job seriously. I’ll talk to Satoshi, see if he’s had any luck.”

And he could also ask Satoshi if Jun had said anything about him in the laundry room earlier. Jun had been coming on strong with the coins, hadn’t he? He frowned at the map, the southwestern coast of Africa blurring as he remembered Jun’s visit – and the subsequent interruption. He heard Masaki sink into his mattress with a sigh, the usual rustling of sheets he made every night.

“What if we just check the garbage for five minutes after lunch tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Three minutes.”

“Good night, Masaki.”

\--

Ohno found Nino hauling a large bag of trash down the hallway the following morning.

“Is that all Nagase’s room garbage?” he asked in surprise. The bag was nearly as large as Nino himself, and the man had to drag it behind him.

“He had breakfast in bed this morning, but he knocked half of his pancakes onto the floor,” Nino replied as Ohno fell into step beside him. “And the rest of this is from his bathroom. I’d rather not tell you what that entails or I may have to kill myself.”

Ohno nodded. It wasn’t that nice to gossip about passengers anyway, not that Ohno really complained when other staff shared said gossip with him. As a bartender, he got to hear about the best and worst of people. There was little that would really shock him, even about Nino’s troublesome charge, but he decided not to inquire. He’d be sad if Nino killed himself.

“We’ve got a window,” Nino explained as Ohno helped him lift the garbage bag up and into the bin in the trash room at the end of the hall. “Nagase’s attending a birthday party.”

“Right now? Whose?”

Nino rolled his eyes. “Eight year old kid’s actually.”

“Oh?”

They headed back for Nagase’s cabin. “They agreed to pay his appearance fee with birthday cake and beer. Just don’t tell his manager.”

Ohno didn’t think he’d be on the phone with Tomoya Nagase’s manager any time soon, so the secret was safe with him. Once they were in the cabin and the door closed, he was greeted with the sight of a giant stuffed giraffe. “What…”

“It’s a long story,” Nino said. It seemed like a lot of things regarding Nagase were long stories. “Ask Masaki.”

They decided to do a search around Nagase’s cabin as long as he was out for some random passenger’s kid’s party. It was unlikely, at least in Ohno’s mind, that Nagase had snatched his guitar strap back while Aiba had gone down for curry night, but it would be stupid to not eliminate every possibility. And with the amount of medications Nagase was on, it wasn’t completely impossible for him to have done so, was it?

Nino started digging through the strange amount of stuff that was lodged under Nagase’s bed while Ohno went into the bathroom. No strap in the tub, but there was a bottle of shampoo shaped like a woman’s body. Naturally curious, he picked it up. He was rewarded with a squirt of shampoo onto his vest when he squeezed the breast.

“Don’t add to the mess, Satoshi,” Nino said from behind him, and he set the bottle down.

“Sorry.”

Nino headed back into the other room while Ohno looked under the sink, behind the toilet, inside the toilet tank.

“Hey Nino…” he called, picking up the bottle of cognac, “he’s got liquor stashed in the toilet!”

“Knew about that already!”

Ohno frowned, setting it back in the tank and replacing the lid. It had probably come from the bar, and some employee was going to get accused of stealing it or using up all the top-shelf liquor so early in the voyage. Hopefully it hadn’t been taken from any of the bars he was assigned to.

The bathroom was full of cosmetics and lotions and a particularly scary looking box of XXXL condoms, but no guitar strap. He headed back into the main cabin area, finding Nino laying on his stomach, shining a small flashlight under the TV stand.

“No luck.”

Nino grunted. “He didn’t bring it back here. There’s no way.”

“Are the others looking?”

Nino pulled out a bra from under the stand with his fingertips. “They’re working most of the day. I know Sho’s planning to sit and watch security tape footage with a bottle of eye drops once his shift starts.”

“Is Masaki working right now?”

Nino didn’t say anything, still frowning as he poked the flashlight under the stand.

“Nino?”

“What?”

“I asked if Masaki was working at the purser’s office right now.”

“Oh,” he replied, fidgeting a bit. “Think so.”

Had something happened? Sure, it was obvious that Nino was frustrated with Aiba about losing the strap, but Aiba was so nice to everyone that nobody could possibly hold a grudge for very long. “Did Masaki say something?”

Nino sat up, tapping the flashlight against his palm. “He’s a really bad employee, you know. And not just at his own job, but in general. He loses something that’s ridiculously important just so he can get curry, he then cries about it instead of manning up and dealing with it, and then he ropes all of us in to save his ass. And then…and then, Satoshi, last night I sent him to the library to get a book for Nagase’s bedtime story, don’t ask, and he brought back porn. How do you not notice you’re carrying a Penthouse magazine?”

Granted, Ohno hadn’t known Nino as long as his other friends on board, but he’d worked at a bar long enough to know all the signs. “You like him, don’t you?”

Nino scowled. “That obvious?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I’d say so.”

“I don’t want to be,” Nino complained, holding out a hand for Ohno to haul him to his feet. “He’s everything that annoys me. He’s too cheerful. He’s too emotional. He’s too stupid!”

“I don’t think Masaki is stupid,” he pointed out as Nino started pulling open Nagase’s drawers to rummage through clothes, hoping a Led Zeppelin shirt might magically appear.

“I know he’s not,” Nino grumbled under his breath. “I just…”

“He’s not your usual type.”

“Exactly.”

Well, he and Sho had been opposites too. Ohno didn’t take his job too seriously. Mixing drinks wasn’t rocket science, and as long as he listened to what people asked for and if he put in an extra cherry once in a while or a colorful umbrella, passengers liked him. Sho, however, lived and breathed his job and took on extra responsibilities just to stay busy.

Then again, all it had taken to get Sho into his cabin and under his sheets had been an extra cherry and a colorful umbrella.

But that was in the past now, and there were other fish in the sea as it were. He hoped Sho would be a bit more like himself and just confess to Jun already. It seemed that the Floating Sakura brought people together whether they liked it or not. It would be nice if Nino and Aiba could connect too.

Nino, however, was still grumbling to himself as he looked through the drawers. “Stupid jerk with stupid frizzy hair and stupid perfect teeth.”

Ohno grinned, opening the armoire to continue the search when a keycard was swiped in the door. Nino slammed the drawer shut and tried to shut the door, but the man on the other side shoved his way in.

“Ninomiya!”

“Busy!”

“Ninomiya, let me in!”

Nino had his back to the door, and Ohno just stared as his friend tried desperately to keep it closed. It was all in vain as another young man came in, frowning quite a bit.

“Mr. Nagase’s at a child’s party,” the man said. “Does he even know them?”

Ohno watched Nino’s mind work as the guy’s eyes scanned the room, noting the open drawers. “He’s having me look for some…clothes to wear for the dining room tonight.”

“That wasn’t what I asked you, although that was going to be my second question,” the guy continued. He looked pretty mean, but a lot of the cabin attendants tended to be snootier than others on account of the people they worked for day in and day out.

“The child, as far as I understand, is a fan. Mr. Nagase is attending the party willingly because he loves his fans.”

The guy sniffed the air, probably smelling the latex that Ohno had been smelling since he came in. “Yeah, he loves his fans alright. How you holding up?”

Nino shrugged. “Be nice if Tegoshi had been here, but what else is new?”

The attendant finally caught Ohno’s eye. “Why is there someone else in here with you?”

“This is Satoshi Ohno.” Nino gestured to his friend. “Ohno, this is Ryo Nishikido.”

“Nice to meet you,” Ohno tried to say before Ryo opened the door and said “Get him out of here.”

Nino tried to protest, but Ohno didn’t want to be responsible for Nino getting in trouble. He couldn’t tell this guy that they were looking for Nagase’s guitar strap anyhow. He was sure Nino would come up with something. His shift at Coconut Cabana started soon anyhow, and he had to change into his swim trunks.

He let Ryo slam the cabin door after him. Even though soundproofing was pretty good for the suites, it was hard not to hear the guy scream “And what the hell’s with the giraffe?” before he headed for the elevator.

\--

He'd woken up to the lyrics of his cell phone ringer- Billie Jean is not my luuuvaaah- screaming next to his ear. He almost didn't get up; he'd been on the late clean-up duty for the 24-hour Crawfish Pizzeria the night before and had tried to nap since his body was still aching to get enough rest to function for the remainder of the day. He only answered when his manager's name flashed across the screen, and only then because he was sure- suddenly completely, gut-wrenchingly sure- that it was about Sadie.

"'Lo?" he mumbled into the mobile.

"Jun, get your ass to the kitchen at the Paradise Dining Room," the voice snipped. "They are short on hands and the sous-chef said you could help with the appetizers."

Jun bolted upright, nearly smacking his head into the wall in his haste. "What? I mean, I'll be right there!"

He threw on his uniform and his shoes, not even bothering to run a brush through his hair, veins alight with the fact that he was going to get to work in the kitchens. He was finally going to get his hands on some food and work alongside the chef- all his work had paid off! Finally, finally the days of busing tables was worth the aggravation.

The Paradise dining room was empty; too early for the scheduled dinners yet, and Jun hurried back to the back, to the swinging metal doors that signaled entry into the kitchen. The sous-chef was standing with his hair tied back behind his head and a scowl on his face, wiping at his face with the back of his hand.

"Thank god," he snipped when Jun screeched to a halt with both palms on the large metal island in the center of the room. "We're short-handed, and I need someone to chop these scallions."

"I will!" Jun beamed. "Where do you want me to start? What cut are we using? What is the soup base made from? Are you using a mixture of spices or keeping it simple so the scallions flavor stands out?"

The sous-chef stared at him and then handed him a large knife. "Just- just cut, okay?"

Well, Jun would take what he could get. He had time to pick the man's brain when he was carefully dividing the mussels. He set the knife down quickly and grabbed an apron from the far wall, tying it behind his waist, fingers twitching in nervousness. He was so close to it now; he could practically taste it (though part of that might have been the lingering aroma of the cod they'd served for lunch).

He'd just picked the knife back up again, breath halting in reverence, when Shun came scrambling through the metal doors, wheezing.

"Jun! Jun, Jun, I need you," Shun gasped, one hand on his chest.

"What?" Jun said.

Shun gestured wildly out past the portal. "Kid is puking all over Triton's Buffet Hall, I need helping cleaning it up."

"No," Jun said.

"Yes, I can't do this by myself, come on," Shun continued.

"No," Jun said again, wilder and only slightly panicked.

Shun stared at him. "What are you doing?"

"I'm cutting scallions," Jun cried. His voice was raising in pitch. He glanced over at the sous-chef, who snatched the knife from his hand and set it back down on the island's countertop.

"I'll get the dish-washer to help," the older man snapped. "Go clean up the hall before people start complaining."

Jun looked down at the knife sitting on the counter, hot tears pricking the sides of his eyes. Out of the corner of his vision, he could see Shun wildly waving at him to hurry up, and all he could do was think about how badly he wanted to drown himself in Venus' Adults Only Hot Tub.

"Jun, let's go," Shun insisted. "Are you coming?"

If Jun spent anymore time cleaning up after guests, he was going to quit. That was it. He was going to hand in his resignation as soon as he could type it up (providing one of the communal printers was open). He would ignore the dining hall for the rest of the night and go review security tapes like Nino had been pestering him to, just to get away from it all.

"Yeah," Jun sighed. He hated the Floating Sakura. He hated the Caribbean. He hated the world. "I'm coming."


	5. Chapter 5

Sho pressed rewind one more time, watching Aiba set down the t-shirt with the strap inside on the counter. His eyes were ready to declare themselves independent and launch themselves from his skull in a spectacularly gory display.

No matter how many times he watched the blurry security footage, Masaki still set the thing down and cocked his head as if hearing some voice, probably the one in his head that told him to do stupid things. He perked up, clapped his hands and left the purser’s office, presumably for curry night.

“Why would you leave?” Sho grumbled, seeing the t-shirt sitting abandoned on the desk. The camera in the room rotated, watching the door and then back to the desk, then back to the door. But the door never opened that Sho could see – the t-shirt was on the counter for one pass of the camera and then gone when the camera came back.

It was almost as though it had vanished into thin air, but Sho didn’t believe in things like that. If only the tape was a little clearer. Everything was in a black and white haze, and it was putting Sho to sleep. Three hours of watching the same twenty minutes of footage wasn’t helping.

He rewound. Aiba put the shirt down and left. The shirt was there. The shirt was there. The shirt was there. The shirt was gone. It took less than ten seconds. He paused the tape angrily, tossing the remote back up on the counter. “Where the hell did it go?”

The door opened, and he jumped to his feet, nearly crashing into the counter when he saw Jun’s grouchy (but still relatively handsome) face.

“Jun.”

“You watching the security tape?” His voice was more displeased than Sho had ever heard it, and considering that Jun had to regularly carry around sticky bowls of ice cream kids left behind, this was pretty significant.

“Yes,” he replied quickly, grabbing the remote control back. Angry Jun kind of excited him as much as mildly annoyed Jun did. He pressed his thumb over the battery cover, flicking it off and back on to keep his hands busy.

Jun invited himself behind the counter before Sho could protest, sitting down with an indignant huff in the chair Sho had just vacated. “Rewind it.”

Sho gulped, wheeling over another chair to sit beside the very unhappy individual. “Okay. I haven’t seen anything.” He pressed rewind, glancing over at Jun every few seconds, wondering if he was going to break something or explain why he looked ready to commit homicide. “Rough night?”

Jun said nothing, just gripping the armrests.

“Okay,” Sho responded, pressing play. They watched it through in silence, Jun leaning forward with his elbow on his knee and hand to his chin. Aiba left Sadie and departed, time passed, the t-shirt was there, the t-shirt was gone, and then Aiba came back in patting his belly happily before panicking at the absence of what he’d left behind.

“It just disappears,” Jun murmured, squinting at the blurry screen.

“Yep.” He was sweating, having Jun sitting so close, radiating body heat and anger and all sorts of things that would probably annoy Sho if it was anyone else. Jun grabbed his hand suddenly, and Sho yelped.

“Sorry,” Jun said, taking the remote control away. “Wow, you’re really sweating.”

“It’s hot in here.”

“It’s climate controlled,” Jun shot back.

“I get hot easily.” He could feel a bead of nervous sweat at the tip of his nose. “Aren’t you hot?”

“I was chopping scallions,” Jun lamented, hitting the button with his thumb. “Helping in the kitchen. You know, until there was barf to clean.”

“Oh.”

Jun frowned, pausing the tape. “This whole thing has no timestamp on it? How cheap is this security system?”

“Pretty damn cheap,” Sho admitted. “I think they put more money into the onboard attractions than the nuts and bolts of the place.”

Jun rewound a little further to see Aiba leaving. “Wait.”

“Wait?” Sho squeaked.

He watched Jun lean forward to tap the tiny security screen with his finger. “There’s the clock by the door. That’s our timestamp.”

Sho was kind of embarrassed. He’d been watching the footage for three hours, and he hadn’t even thought of something so simple. And he was Mr. Kusanagi’s most trusted employee? “Okay, Aiba leaves at 6:13 PM.”

They played through the tape again, watching the camera scroll back and forth. As the seconds ticked by, he found himself leaning closer and closer to the screen, and Jun did the same until their shoulders were touching. But there was little time for Sho to agonize and overanalyze what that could mean because he was glued to the black and white footage.

The clock read 6:21, then the camera panned to the counter. “Wait wait wait,” Jun was whispering, hand absentmindedly drifting to Sho’s knee and squeezing. At least Sho thought it was absentmindedly. “There!” Jun cried, slapping Sho hard on the leg.

“Ow, what?” he winced. Jun really hit hard.

“There,” Jun said, pointing at the clock. “6:23!”

Sho blinked, fumbling to grab the remote back from Jun. “6:23…but…but…”

“But it only takes a few seconds for the camera to go from the door to the counter and back…”

“…so if it’s 6:21 there…” Sho said, realization knocking him on the head harder than Jun was squeezing his leg. Wait, Jun was still squeezing his leg?

“…and it’s 6:23 when the camera comes back…”

Sho pressed rewind. “Maybe we’re reading it wrong. It’s blurry. It might have been 6:21 turning to 6:22…”

He jerked and the remote clattered to the floor when Jun suddenly grabbed for him, holding Sho’s face between his hands. His hands smelled a bit like antibacterial gel.

“Sho. Seriously. There’s a gap in the tape.”

“Uh.” Jun was squishing his cheeks so close together, Sho probably had fish lips.

“There’s a gap in the tape! Sadie didn’t disappear – she was kidnapped!”

“Uhhhh.”

“What?” Jun finally seemed to realize that not only was he holding Sho’s face like he was about to shove his tongue down his throat, but they were in a not so private place and anyone could walk in. Jun let him go. “We have to…”

Sho was still a little shell-shocked from Jun’s proximity. “Antibacterial...”

“…tell someone about this.”

“…gel.”

Jun backed up, pulling his phone from his pocket. “I’ll call Nino.”

\--

"This had better be good," Nino said crossly, ducking into the room to avoid being seen by Eduardo the lifeguard (who always leered at him in very bile-inducing manners). "I gave Nagase the excuse that I needed to go and track down the number of the casino working red-head he saw last night, and I'm already going to have to go back empty-handed."

"This is important!" Sho blustered, puffing up his cheeks a bit. He looked- well, kind of odd. Kind of like he'd been sweating a lot or something and had attempted to dry off with one of the sauna towels. "We reviewed the tape-"

"-and you will not believe this," Jun cut in. His eyes were wide. "Somebody definitely stole Sadie."

Sho waved his hands in the air. "Well, okay, we don't know that for certain, all we know is that somebody messed with the tape."

Nino sat down hard and almost missed the corner of the chair. To his left, Ohno was chewing absent-mindedly on a few pieces of celery from the Bloody Mary mixings, and to his right, Aiba was chewing on his fingernails in a verklempt manner. Nino almost felt bad.

Almost.

"Slow down," he instructed sternly, because Sho was looking dangerously short of breath and Jun was almost falling off the front of his chair in anticipation. "Sho- what?"

Sho looked kind of light-headed. "We reviewed the security tape from the office, and we saw that-"

"-no, I saw," Jun interjected, with a sharp glance in Sho's direction. Sho swallowed hard, paling visibly, and continued.

"Jun saw that the clock on the wall was suddenly 2 minutes ahead, right when Sadie disappeared."

Nino stared at him for a very long moment, and then to the security tape sitting on top of the crappy black and white television set pushed into the corner. He closed his eyes, holding up both hands for silence. When had his massive headache come around?

"Okay," he said slowly. "Someone stole the guitar strap."

"Who would do that?" Aiba moaned. "Who would want it? It was wrapped in a Led Zeppelin shirt!"

Ohno shrugged. "Maybe someone who really likes 'Stairway to Heaven'?"

"The point is that someone stole it," Nino said, louder. "We can stop looking for places it might have been misplaced, and start looking for people who might have taken it."

Aiba's eyes were very wide and looked as if they were starting to fill with tears. Nino did feel bad then; almost bad enough to reach over and grab the other man's hand. He didn't really want to do that for a whole myriad of reasons he really, really didn't want to get into, so he settled for sort of awkwardly patting Aiba on the arm.

"If the tape was messed up, it's most likely an employee," Sho pointed out. "Because they knew the security tape was back here, and did it purposefully."

Jun blinked. "I hadn't thought of that. Smart."

"Really?" Sho asked, looking very hopeful and very disgusting. Nino threw the TV remote at him.

"Pay attention!" Nino snapped.

Ohno had finished his celery sticks, and had moved onto small pieces of pineapple from the Pina Coladas. "Should we make a suspect list?"

Jun stretched back across the folding chair with an annoyed sounding sigh, arms held high over his head as he popped his back. It made the hem of his shirt ride up, exposing a bit of bare flesh above his regulation slacks, and Sho turned a funny shade of red.

Nino threw the keys at him that time.

"Who would even know about the strap, though?" Jun said towards the ceiling.

"Maybe someone grabbed it without knowing what it was," Nino suggested. He stared down at his fingers, holding them up as he spoke. "Maybe- maybe they just saw that it was lying there. Or maybe they'd been watching Aiba the whole time."

Aiba sniffed, and Nino moved to awkwardly patting his knee instead.

"Does anyone have a vendetta against Nagase?" Ohno asked.

"It's a cruise!" Sho sputtered. "How would anyone have anything against him?"

Nino pulled out a piece of paper and started jotting down things with the blue ballpoint pen lying nearby. When his memory failed, he chewed on the cap a bit before finishing, and then handed the list to Ohno, who just sort of stared at it. "What is this?"

"A list of all the women he's already had sex with," Nino said.

Aiba stared at the paper, and both Sho and Jun moved closer to see it.

"There are 27 names here," Ohno stated, raising one eyebrow in Nino's direction.

"Yes."

Jun grabbed for the list. "How on earth has he slept with this many women already?!"

"You sure do pay attention," Aiba said, and he didn't sound quite so sad since he seemed more impressed, and Nino found that he liked that much better than the teary-eyes.

"Keep your enemies close," Nino replied.

"Some of these are staff," Jun commented, scanning down the list of names with his index finger. "We can start with them?"

Sho sighed. "Split up and have bleach-inducing conversations with them, no doubt."

"Alright," Nino started, pointing at Jun and Sho, "you two start with them. Hit anyone on the list who works for the Floating Sakura. Ohno, you try talking to any of the bartenders to see if anyone's mentioned anything- people talk when they drink."

Aiba perked a bit. "What about me?"

"You need to figure out who would know about the security tape in here, and how to stop it."

"And what about you?" Jun asked a bit nastily, which really wasn't necessary considering how Nino already had to deal with the brunt of the problem in the first place.

He shot the man a glare as he rose to his feet. "I'm going to attempt to not off myself with Nagase's illegal machete and find a random number to give him in hopes that he's too stupid to figure out it's not actually the red-head's."

He stomped out the door, resigning himself to at least several more hours of his fate before Nagase's bed time rolled around.

\--

After two articles about RVs that cost more than Nino's failed college education had and three choruses of "Nappy Nappy Time Time", Nagase had finally fallen asleep, and Nino trudged down the staff hallways to his room, hoping to god that Jun was either still cleaning up puke or sleeping already because he really, really didn't want to have to deal with anyone.

Jun wasn't there when he opened the door, and he didn't even bother to flip the lights on. He knew where his cot was, anyway. He collapsed on top of it face-first into the pillow.

It took a couple of seconds to realize something had crunched beneath his chest. Something that sounded suspiciously like paper. He grabbed for it, annoyed that Jun had deemed his bed the best place to put the list of Nagase's conquests, and his fingers closed around an envelope.

The list hadn't been in an envelope.

Nino bolted upright and scrambled for the light, missing it three times before his palm smacked against it. The envelope was plain and white and said nothing on the outside at all, which was maddeningly unhelpful because he didn't even have handwriting to go off of. He slowly opened it and pulled out a torn, cut scrap of fabric.

He stared at it in confusion, fingering the material. It was black and the back didn't look like anything much, but even as he turned it over, several things were registering in his mind.

One: it was cotton.

T-shirts were made of cotton.

Two: it was on his bed, which meant someone either had a key to his quarters, or knew someone who did.

It was not a good realization.

Nino knew what he was going to see before he even had the fabric flipped. Worn-away print half cut from the shredding, and the easily distinguishable letters "in".

Zeppelin.

They were being baited. And the thief wasn't pulling any punches.

\--

To Ohno, it seemed like the joke was on all of them. There was no really subtle way to ask his fellow bartending staff members if they’d heard about a stolen t-shirt. Because that inevitably led to more questions. Is it your t-shirt? Where did you lose it? Why do you care so much about a shirt? He wasn’t a really good liar, and the last thing he needed was someone finding out what was going on. It would get Masaki in a whole lot of trouble.

He had to be sneakier about it. “Hear anything good lately?” he tried asking Inagaki, the lead wine steward the following night before the dinner rush.

“What do you mean good?” Inagaki asked curiously, examining the labels and vintages. “Grab me another Chardonnay, would you?”

He did so, frowning. “Oh, you know,” he said. “Gossip, rumors, stuff.”

“Satoshi, do you know something I don’t?” Goro wondered, setting the bottle down on the bar with a decisive thump.

“Uh no. No, Goro, that’s why I’m asking you.” He was really bad at this stuff. See, this was why he did a lot more listening than talking.

Inagaki was still suspicious. “Well, hmm. There was this one guy the other night who kept claiming he was Spiderman once he’d gone through three bottles of Merlot.”

“Spiderman?”

“Yep, Spiderman!” Goro flicked his wrists emphatically. “Spider, spider!”

“I’ll be on the lookout for him.”

Goro nodded and grabbed a few more bottles to wheel to the dining rooms. “Not much else aside from that Nagase guy.”

Ohno dropped the bottle of orange juice he was refilling. “Oh?”

“It’s the strangest thing.” Ohno was listening far more attentively now, even with sticky orange juice soaking through his slacks. “He kept asking for the smelly. Nobody in Paradise knew what he was asking for. What’s a smelly, right?”

“Right.”

“Turns out he was asking for me,” Goro said, looking a little proud as he continued arranging the bottles on his cart. “Sommelier!”

“Ah.” Ohno didn’t know what that meant either. For once, Nagase’s mistake wasn’t all that far-fetched, was it?

“So I went to his table, and I saw he had a steak about the size of a hubcap, so I figured he was looking for a nice red to pair with it,” Goro continued. “But he just grabbed the first one I showed him. He didn’t even smell it. The guy had a red plastic cup that he brought himself.”

“Why?”

“Well, he told me that he was convinced someone would try to poison him so he wouldn’t use our glasses. And I assured him that the bottle was still corked, but he said that the French were after him for some reason or another, and that they’d, quote, ‘find a way, they always do.’ But I said it was from Napa, and I showed him the bottle. He didn’t know where Napa was!”

“Oh?”

Goro was getting a little incensed at the memory, and he was usually so easy going! “So he changed his mind and turned the wine away and had me bring him a Jack and coke.”

“But…he said they were trying to poison him?”

Inagaki was gripping the neck of the wine bottle like it was Nagase’s, he imagined. “Well, he apparently thinks the French are only poisoning his wine. Hard liquor is no problem.”

“Weird guy.”

“You’re telling me. Anyhow, I better head off. You take care now,” Goro said, pushing the cart off with a huff. He didn’t take well to someone declining his recommendations, it seemed.

Well, he had sticky slacks that smelled like a Florida orange grove, and a shift until 3 AM. And no information that would help, other than more proof that Tomoya Nagase was a really strange dude. At least Nagase hadn’t asked about his guitar strap again. And it was probably unlikely that Goro was involved – the guy was too busy doing his wine stuff to be stealing stuff from the purser’s office.

So where did that leave him? It left him at work and…speaking of the purser’s office, Sho and Masaki’s boss had just sat down at the end of the bar. At least this meant he was here and not in the office, potentially reviewing security tapes.

“Hey Mr. Kusanagi,” Ohno said as cheerfully as he could manage with juice-soaked pants on. “What can I get for you tonight?”

Kusanagi was serious about work, that much Sho had related, but off the clock, he tended to be pretty…goofy. Right now, he smelled like he’d come from another bar on a different deck, and he was smiling wide.

“Hey! Sakurai’s pal! Screwdriver if you please!”

Well, he had a decent enough memory. And since he was wasted already, he probably wouldn’t mind Ohno grabbing the cheapest vodka they had available. Seeing Kusanagi just reminded him about those early days with Sho – sneaking into the purser’s office and leaving little doodles on the counter for him to find, the way Sho’s face would burn red in embarrassment.

Apparently it was scandalous for a prude like Sho to look at a naughty drawing on work time, which was why Ohno usually got scolded. Sho was just…very particular. Most people Ohno slept with seemed to be charmed by his drawings – Sho didn’t really like seeing cartoon boobs when his boss could walk in at any second. It was just one of the many reasons that he and Sho were better off as friends.

He poured in a healthy amount of vodka for Kusanagi, added some of the orange juice he hadn’t managed to spill and stirred it quickly. “Here you are!”

Kusanagi took a sip and smiled. “You…you are a good bartender!”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Is it…” Kusanagi downed the drink in a gulp, ignoring the straw. “Is it hot in here?”

Ohno blinked as the glass slammed down on the bar top, and Kusanagi started undoing the first few buttons of his shirt. “Um. I don’t think so?”

“I think it’s hot!” One of the buttons popped off, scattering down to where some passengers had just taken a seat. “Can you make me a Long Island iced tea, double up on the tequila? Man, it’s hot.”

“I’ll…I’ll be right back, sir.” He scooted down the bar and quickly took the passengers’ drink orders. He made Kusanagi’s with one hand and got his phone out of his pocket with the other. Since Kusanagi was already unbuckling his belt, he definitely didn’t need to be here doing anything he’d regret. Sho and Masaki had enough problems – they didn’t need to be doing their boss’ job too if he got confined to his cabin by the captain or something.

“Sho Sho Sho,” he mumbled to himself as he clicked down through his contacts. “Come on.”

“Heeeeey, can you put some more vodka too?” Ohno gave up on the text message entirely and just hit send for Sho’s number. “Barkeep! Some ale as well!”

“What?” he heard Sho’s grouchy voice. He’d probably been asleep after his hours reviewing tapes with Jun.

“Get to my bar right now. Your boss is getting frisky, and there are passengers…”

“Shingo!” Kusanagi cried, pounding his fist against the counter. “Shingo, where are you?”

Sho gasped. “The hell?”

“Who the hell’s Shingo?” one of the passengers said, getting up and walking off with their drink in annoyance.

Ohno hurried back, hanging up on Sho and shoving his phone back in his pocket. Kusanagi was already shirtless. “Damn it,” he grumbled, sticking his foot on the counter. Ohno made a flying leap over the bar to catch the garment and try to cover the guy up. It probably looked rather impressive, but Ohno didn't have time to gloat over his athleticism.

By now, a small crowd was gathering, pointing and whispering as Kusanagi kept calling for Shingo, whoever Shingo was. “It’s so hot! Maybe I should go back to the office…I need to review all the safes and stuff…”

The safes? Like, the safe where Aiba SHOULD have put the guitar strap? Oh crap! He reached for one of Kusanagi’s flailing arms, trying to shove it back into the shirt sleeve. “Just…just put your clothes back on, sir!”

Where was Sho?

\--

Aiba woke to Sho shaking him awake, hands clenched hard around his shoulders.

"Aiba! Aiba, get up- I need your help! Aiba!"

It startled Aiba enough that he sort of half-tumbled out of bed, glaring blearily up at his roommate who interrupted a particularly pleasant dream about drinks in coconuts with tiny straw hats. Sho looked haggard, half of his hair sticking up at odd angles like he'd been sleeping particularly hard on his side. He also looked somewhat panicked, the emotion obvious on his face.

"Wha?" Aiba yawned.

Sho didn't even waste any time- he grabbed for Aiba's arm and dragged him out into the hallway, not even giving him enough time to grab his sandals. "We have to go, we have to go, Mr. Kusanagi is-"

"What?!" Aiba was suddenly wide awake. His heart clenched uncomfortably in his chest; did Kusanagi know? Oh, god, if Sho had come for him, then Mr. Kusanagi had probably asked for him specifically. Was he going to get fired? Had he just woke up from his last nap aboard the Floating Sakura?

He blinked back the furious sting of hot tears, trying to calm his racing heart, and allowed Sho to pull him down the corridor and onto the staircase. "Wait, Sho, this- this isn't the way to the Purser's Office!"

"We aren't going to the Purser's Office," Sho ground out between clenched teeth. Aiba quickly found himself tumbling onto the outer walk space of the Lido deck, slipping over a slick patch of wet linoleum.

Aiba sputtered and scrambled to keep himself from sliding right into the railing, hands gripping the metal bars tightly.

"Sho, what-"

Sho never got a chance to answer Aiba's question; he didn't need to. From behind them came a blur of flesh-colored, quickly moving skin, streaming by them with hands sort of sticking out in front of the figure.

"Shingo!" came the bizarre, half-warbled battle cry, and Sho's eyes went very, very wide.

"Mr. Kusanagi!" Sho called out, and immediately took off after the very naked man who was currently streaking down the side of the Lido deck. "Mr. Kusanagi, please wait and put some clothes on!"

Sho was quick when panicked, but Aiba had run track in high school and one year of college, and he caught up without much trouble. Mr. Kusanagi, however, was much faster for an old guy than Aiba had given him credit for. The man was weaving in and out of deck chairs like he was skiing the slopes, jumping over a plastic table sitting between two of the sun-chairs. There weren't many people out in the darkness, but the lights of the Lido deck stayed on 24/7, bathing the entirety of it in bright, fluorescent light. It wasn't helping them hide the fact that their boss was currently screaming and dashing naked across the ship.

"Mr. Kusanagi!" Sho kept trying, like the repetition of the man's name would bring him crashing back to reality.

Aiba wondered how many shots he'd taken.

"It's so hot!" was the only response they got from the nude figure still a few yards in front of them, slipping a bit on a wet towel that the pool boy had failed to pick up from the floor.

Aiba saw the towel but Sho didn't seem to; the other man skidded on it and nearly fell, arms flailing wildly even as he continued screaming at their superior. "Mr. Kusanagi, it's the Caribbean! Of course it's hot! Please stop running!"

Aiba helped Sho back to his feet, and the other man was breathing hard, gesturing wildly towards Kusanagi. "Ignore him, just get him! We can't let the guests see him like this!"

That was true enough- and maybe Aiba could prove himself again if he got the situation under control without any major incidents. Mr. Kusanagi had edged out a bit of a lead since Sho had stumbled, but Aiba drew on his reserve energy. He'd eaten three Snickers bars that day; surely there was some sugar in his body he could call upon when he needed it. He dug in deep like he had when running the 100 meter relay.

The alcohol wasn't really helping Kusanagi's coordination. He tried jumping over another chair, but sort of missed and tripped a bit. It gave Aiba enough time to catch back up. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a few guests in Tommy Bahama swim trunks- late night bachelor party headed to the hot tub. It was too late to keep anyone from knowing, but if he could just minimize the damage...

Kusanagi rounded the front corner of the Adults Only sunbathing nook and Sho was there with one of the blue plastic pool tarps in his hands. Kusanagi let out a surprised yelp when Sho took him down, wrapping the tarp around him as best he could as he tackled him to the deck.

Aiba stopped with his hands on his knees, breathing quickly. "What on earth...?"

"Masaki, help me!" Sho hissed, because Kusanagi was struggling madly and violently against the restraint on his person.

"Shingo! Shingo, the ninjas have found me!" he yelled.

Aiba was a little bit impressed that his boss thought he was a ninja. He hoped he was some kind of bad-ass ninja assassin, hell-bent on taking the ship down.

"Mr. Kusanagi, please stop thrashing!" Sho pleaded, and Aiba knelt down beside him to help throw his arms around the wriggling figure under the cerulean plastic. "Please, just calm down and-"

"What's going on here, boys?" came a voice from behind Sho, from the shadows. Aiba hadn't seen the new figure coming and he jolted in surprise; one of his elbows caught Kusanagi in the chest or something, because the man gave a muffled 'oof!' beneath the protective cover.

Sho looked incredibly flustered, struggling to his feet. "Captain Kimura! Sir, oh, this-"

"It's nothing, sir!" Aiba said, to help. Captain Kimura was a tall man with a crisp white uniform that draped over his shoulders in ways that seemed Very Important. He demanded respect just by standing there with his hands behind his back. And then he raised one eyebrow at Aiba, and Aiba felt just a bit of his confidence dissolve away- just a bit. "Er, I mean-"

"Mr. Kusanagi is our superior," Sho said, "and I think he's just had a bit too much to drink..."

"Ninjas!" Kusanagi piped in from beneath the tarp. "Ninjas, Shingo!"

Captain Kimura was silent for a very long moment, studying the tarp that had gone miraculously still. Aiba tried glancing over at Sho, because he was a little worried- were they going to get in trouble for this? Was Mr. Kusanagi their responsibility? He didn't want to get fired because his boss went streaking across the Lido deck where the guests could see him.

"I see," was all Kimura said, and Aiba could read nothing in his tone.

Finally, the captain reached forward and grabbed for the tarp, hauling Kusanagi up to his feet. Aiba could see the man's bare ankles beneath the covering of the plastic.

"Well, I'll take care of this for the time being," Captain Kimura told them. He didn't look mad, and he didn't seem mad, but he still sounded very stern- and Aiba was inclined to do exactly as the man said.

"You caught me!" Kusanagi cried. The tarp moved a bit, like he was trying to glance back and forth at what was holding him captive. "You caught the tater!"

Sho shifted nervously between the soles of his feet. "Er, Captain Kimura, sir, what do you want us to do?"

"Nothing," Kimura said. "Go back to the Purser's Office and work your shifts. I'm going to put all of the dealings there in your control. Do you think you can handle that?"

Aiba gulped nervously. Oh, god, he'd already screwed up once and he hadn't even been without supervision when he'd lost Sadie. He felt a sudden flash of shame sweep through his form, and he stared down at his sandal-less feet. "Yes, sir."

Next to him, Sho muttered an echo.

Captain Kimura hauled the still tarp-covered Kusanagi away and into the less conspicuous employee stairwell just past the women's restroom, leaving Sho and Aiba alone on the deck.

"Crap," Sho moaned, dejectedly. "Do you know what this means?"

"We don't have to worry about taking extra long breaks?" Aiba tried.

Sho groaned. "It means anything that happens at the office now is all our fault. All our fault! We will be taking full and complete responsibility for this Sadie mess no matter what. Oh, this is just awful."

Aiba stared forlornly down at his toes, pale against the brightness of the deck beneath his feet, and just sighed.


	6. Chapter 6

Ever since the incident in Nagase's room, Ryo had been keeping an annoyingly close eye on Nino, and it was making things difficult- since they still hadn't found Sadie, and things were starting to cross from Bad to Very Bad; Nino didn't think there was any coming back from Very Bad.

His boss- for all intents and purposes- caught him leaving Nagase's room with a giant bag filled with the rock star's 500 bagillion prescription pill bottles.

"Where are you going?" Ryo asked, and Nino wanted to knock the smug expression right off his face.

"Nagase is sun-bathing," he explained, as if to a child, as he shut the door behind him and pocketed the key in his jacket, "and it's time for his midday medications. I thought it was best not to disrupt his plans for the day, and to conduct this business out on the deck."

If Ryo wanted to comment on the sarcasm, he didn't show it. He just nodded and uncrossed his arms, looking slightly less stern than he had moments earlier. Nino just wanted him to leave- he didn't even care about getting on the man's good side anymore, just about getting out of his never-failing sight.

"You know, it's very important that Nagase leave here with good feelings towards the line," Ryo said. Like he thought this was all new information to Nino, or something, and wasn't something they mentioned at least five times during new employee orientation training. "If he has a great time, he'll tell other people about us. He could do wonders for our credibility."

"Yeah, or he could accidentally sink the whole ship," Nino grumbled under his breath. Ryo gave him a look and Nino straightened, clearing his throat. "Look, Taichi is going to call very soon to ask if Nagase's meds were administered on time, and I'd like to be able to report good things back."

"Fine," was all Ryo said, and when he left, Nino let out a long-suffering sigh of relief.

Plus, he'd been telling the truth. Mostly.

He found Nagase lying on the Adults-Only section of the Sun Deck, talking to two women in string bikinis and extra-large sunglasses.

"Hey, Cambodia!" Nagase shouted, and waved Nino over. He was drinking something fruity out of a drink with a little straw hat on it, and from the empty glasses littering the plastic table next to him, had started quite a few hours ago. Nino moved to Nagase's side and tried not to roll his eyes, though holding himself back was difficult. "These are my new friends."

"I'm sure they are," Nino said, and gave both women a strained smile. Honestly, their presence only got Nagase riled up, and the last thing Nino wanted to deal with was Nagase on the prowl. Again.

"Are you going to come into the hot tub with us?" one of them asked.

Nagase took a long drink out of his straw and sighed loudly and contentedly. "Yeah, definitely. I'll be there in a few, gotta take care of some stuff with my homey here."

Both ladies seemed pleased with the answer, and left with swishing of their hips. Nagase turned his grin on Nino, despite the fact that such a tactic never, ever worked. The man hadn't quite figured that out yet, it seemed.

"Say, can you help a fella out here? I need some of that there oily-crap rubbed on me, I'm getting a bit overheated."

Nino picked up the bottle and looked at it. "You realize this is tanning oil and not sunscreen, right?"

"My washboard abs look way hotter when I'm tanned," Nagase confided.

"I'm not touching your abs," Nino said, irritated, and set the bottle back on the table. "You can get that yourself. Anyway, it's medicine time."

Nagase just sort of waved his hand at him, which was his favorite form of dismissal. "Right, right. Say, I've been wanting to say hi to Sadie. I miss having her beneath my pillow at night. Think you could go and get her for me so she could lay out in the sun with me?"

Nino's breath caught in his throat, chest constricting tightly. For a very long moment, he just stared at his charge, trying furiously to come up with something to say. Unhelpfully, his brain just kept showing him all the different scenarios for how he could get fired, and how horrible going home would be knowing he couldn't even make three months on the Floating Sakura.

"Actually, I think you're right about those abs," Nino sputtered, grabbing for the oil again. "The tan would really help the definition in them. Here, turn over and I'll get your shoulders, too."

Nagase sputtered out something that might have been a protest, but Nino just sort of forcibly turned the man over and started lathering on the oily substance on his back.

"I could get you another drink, too," Nino continued, grimacing when Nagase made pleased sounding noises under the oil-rubbing ministrations and trying very, very hard not to think too hard about what he was doing. "What were you drinking?"

Nagase mumbled something that sounded like 'Sex on the Beach' into the deck chair.

Nino capped the oil again and tried to find a towel to wipe his hands off on. The only one nearby was the one Nagase was laying on, so he found a corner sticking out from beneath the man's mammothly hairy legs and swallowed down his annoyed groan. "Alright, now let's get you those meds so that Taichi doesn't spend the next thirty minutes chewing me out."

"And then you can go and get Sadie-" Nagase started, turning back over and sighing, throwing one arm over his eyes to shield the sunlight.

Nino's stomach twisted uncomfortably again, and his fingers shook while trying to get the lid off the pill bottles. "Right, sure, Sadie..."

He was going to hit panic mode very, very soon, and he could barely see straight as he shuffled through the massive pile of pill containers in the bag he had slung over one shoulder. He couldn't even remember which ones Nagase needed to take after lunch- something about colons and anxiety and cholesterol regulators, and then Nino came across the sleeping pills.

"I think she'd really love the deck air," Nagase was saying, apparently to Nino though Nino hadn't heard a word before then, "and it would be good for her to get out of the safe for awhile..."

Oh, he was violating just about every ethics code the ship had ever instilled upon his morality, and the truth was, Nino was past caring. He opened the bottle and shook out three of the round, non-descript pills- thank heaven for small favors, anyway- and let them fall into the rest of his handful. He didn't even feel all that bad holding the small smattering of medications out to Nagase.

"Here, just take these, and I'll go get... everything," he said.

Nagase took the handful without question, swallowing the lot down with the last of his drink.

Nino left his charge and made his way to the bar down the steps on the Lido Deck, and hoped he didn't look suspicious as he ordered a Sex on the Beach and drummed his fingers on the bar counter while waiting for it. At least the staff manning the post wasn't Ohno- Ohno could read Nino way too well for Nino's liking.

By the time Nino got back to the Adults-Only enclave with the new drink, Nagase was snoring loudly into the crook of his arm, and he could breathe a sigh of guilty, guilty relief.

Things were not going well.

And Nino had the horrible, sinking feeling that they were only going to get worse.

\--

“Please don’t run!” he said in the jolliest voice he could manage, flapping the wings of the Eduardo Eagle costume. “This arcade is for good boys and girls!”

The boy in question, pockets overflowing with tickets from the skeeball area, proceeded to stomp on the foam talons on Aiba’s foot.

“Hey! Ouch!”

The kid ran off to meet some of his other little devil companions, leaving Aiba pretty damn sore. This was the fourth kid in half an hour who had stepped on his foot or kicked him in the ass, and he was just grateful nobody had tried to punch him in the beak yet. He was really regretting having agreed to cover an arcade shift to make up for Nagase’s giant giraffe - and Nino had never said anything about wearing stupid costumes!

“Eduardo!” the midway manager called out to him, looking away from the ring toss to scold him. “Don’t just flap your gums! Flap your wings, would ya?”

“My name’s not Eduardo,” Aiba grumbled, still limping off in the direction of the basketball game.

“What was that?”

“You got it, Mr. Matsuoka!” Aiba shouted, flapping his wings. And of course, Mr. Matsuoka couldn’t see Aiba’s middle finger inside the giant wing.

This was the longest shift ever. Aiba liked people. And he liked kids too! But apparently he didn’t like kids on cruise ships, specifically those between the ages of 9 and 13 who ran wild in the arcade away from their boozing parents. If he’d ever acted this way at that age, his mom would have grabbed him by the ear and tossed him overboard.

He was just too used to the quiet of the purser’s office. Aside from the past week from hell, his work was usually quiet. He just played his iPod and went through several games of Spider Solitaire whenever it was his usual shift. There’d be the occasional money changing or adding something to a safe, but it was very calm. And the people were nicer. In here there were blinking lights and screaming kids and popping balloons (which inevitably led to more screaming).

He made it all the way to the basketball game, but the arcade was noisy and crowded, and he still hadn’t spotted Nino. They were supposed to be working this shift together, and he was getting worried. How hard could it be to spot another person in an animal costume? Had something happened to him?

They had to talk about Nagase. They’d be docking and letting off the whole darn ship at Margaritaville in another day - if they could get Nagase off the ship completely, maybe they could do some better investigation of whoever had stolen Sadie. It had to be someone on the staff - someone who could mess with the video and break into their cabins to leave ransom scraps from the Led Zeppelin t-shirt. But where was Nino?

“Mister Eagle?”

Aiba looked down to see a snotty nosed little one tugging on the brown feathers at his hip. She couldn’t have been more than five or six years old. Oh no...

“Mister Eagle? Mister Eagle, I can’t find mommy!”

He crouched down, looking out at her through the open beak. “Mister Eagle’s here, okay? What’s your name, kiddo?”

“Heidi!”

“Okay, Heidi. Where did you last see your mommy?”

He really wasn’t supposed to deal with lost kids. As “arcade costumed staff” he was just supposed to keep kids from breaking the machines and pose for photos. There was a whole pen off by Matsuoka’s station to wrangle all the kids that got separated, but Heidi had little pigtails and cute overalls and she wasn’t stomping on his foot or tugging on his tail feathers. And besides, he’d really screwed up most aspects of his job this week - maybe doing a good deed would give him some karma back.

“She said she was having a date with Jack!”

“Is Jack your daddy?”

“Nope!”

“Who is Jack?”

“He is Jose’s friend! I think Jose was going to be there too! And Captain Morgan!”

“But Heidi, the captain of this ship is Captain...” Aiba paused, realization setting in. Heidi’s mommy sounded like a pretty big lush. Maybe she would have been good company for Mr. Kusanagi - maybe she could have helped him keep his damn clothes on.

And that was when Heidi wrapped herself around his yellow tights-covered leg and wouldn’t let go, blubbering in a rather adorable way. “Mister Eagle, where’s mommy?”

He needed to find Nino. He had things he was supposed to talk about with Nino, and now he had a kindergartner with an irresponsible parent snotting all over his tights. Aiba glanced over to the lost kids pen, seeing a bunch of little terrors kicking the fence that was keeping them in. He couldn’t just leave the girl there, but he couldn’t really wander around the ship in an eagle costume, could he?”

\--

Ten minutes later, he was carrying the whimpering girl around the Midori deck in search of her horrible mother. In the eagle costume.

“Where ya going, Foghorn Leghorn?” a drunk college guy hollered at him. “I say, I say, where ya going?”

“Oh shut up,” he muttered, holding Heidi closer. At this point, going back to the arcade would just get him yelled at by Matsuoka. Maybe the guy would strap him to the inflate the balloon game and have a bunch of punk kids squirt the water in his face. Or have kids kick soccer balls at his nuts.

He finally found a woman sitting at Ohno’s bar, and from the way Heidi perked up, he’d probably hit the jackpot. Fortunately the woman was still sitting upright on the stool and was holding an animated, but not entirely slurred conversation with his friend.

Ohno stared at him for a few seconds, vodka overflowing into the shot glass he was preparing for a customer. “Masaki?” Ohno said as soon as he peeked through the beak.

He set Heidi down. “Excuse me, ma’am?”

The woman turned to look at him, blinking a few times. “Hey...Satoshi, how many have I had? There’s a bird talking to me now...”

He took the eagle head off and was just about to explain when Heidi let out a blood-curdling scream.

“MISTER EAGLE! YOUR HEAD CAME OFF!”

“What are you doing to my child?” the mother screamed, starting to beat him with her purse, and Ohno didn’t bother to help him. “Put the head on! Put it back on!”

“Stop...” Aiba squealed, feeling Louis Vuitton smacking him hard in the ribs and even through the costume, it hurt like a bitch. “Stop, please! I’ll put it back!”

“WHY DID YOUR HEAD COME OFF, MISTER EAGLE!? MOMMY!”

He shoved the head back on as quickly as he could with a woman purse-whipping him and a screaming child destroying his eardrums and a bar full of passengers staring. The mother abandoned her date with Jack and picked the little girl up.

“We are never traveling on this cruise line again!” she insisted before carrying the child out of the room. Not even a thank you for rescuing her very young child from the arcade. No apology for getting her drink on and letting a little girl wander around alone.

Ohno pushed a shot glass towards him, and Aiba could smell the vodka.

“Not on the job,” Aiba whined. “I have to find Nino!”

Ohno shoved the glass back at his feather-covered hand. “I think you could use it.”

“I”m not taking the head off again.”

“Masaki, take the shot and get out of here, okay?”

Ohno’s face was not unfriendly though. And he’d been so nice about this whole Sadie thing so far when he didn’t really HAVE to be involved. But he’d given advice and looked for the guitar strap even though he wasn’t even with Sho now, but they were still friends so he did so out of friendship...Satoshi was his friend. He had friends - real friends here on board.

“Are you...are you crying?” Satoshi asked, voice full of surprise as he tilted his head to look through the hole in the beak.

He waved his wing. “No. No, of course I’m not crying!” He grabbed the shot glass and held the beak open, pouring the liquor into his mouth. It burned. A lot. “I’m just remembering something though. I’m kind of bad with shots.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

He slammed the glass down on the bar top and waggled his eagle tail feathers. “Give me another one. You know. Just one more. For luck.”

\--

Eleventy-five shots later (or whatever, who was counting?!) he wandered back in to the arcade in love with the world and everything about it. He flapped his eagle wings for anyone who looked at him funny.

“I love the Floating Sakura! I love being a part of the Floating Sakura!”

Matsuoka eyed him when he came back in. “Eduardo, where you been? The ticket counter at the redemption center broke down and some kid got his sticky hand stuck in the claw game!”

“I love you, Mr. Matsuoka!”

Matsuoka seemed kind of happy with that though, unable to complain or even chastize Aiba again as he danced around like the happiest eagle in the nest. “Uh, I love you too?”

Where was Nino? That was all Aiba was really thinking about. Sure, he had some deliciousness in his tummy, and he felt like a million bucks, but he had an obligation to Nino! It was his fault that Nino was so grumpy all the time, and Aiba didn’t want a grumpy Nino! Because Nino was cute when he was grumpy, sure, but he was far cuter when he was laughing, and Aiba couldn’t remember the last time Nino laughed.

He flitted around the arcade, finally reaching a part he hadn’t been to - the supply closet behind the ticket redemption counter. The first indication that Nino just might have been inside came when the guy at the counter complained about some “costumed idiot” not coming out for four hours.

“Heeeey Nino,” he slurred when he went in, closing the door behind him.

Nino was sitting on the floor, meerkat head beside him. He looked super cute in the remainder of the fuzzy meerkat costume though.

“Why didn’t you come out?”

Nino looked up and frowned. “Are you drunk?”

“I’m great!”

Nino sighed. “Yeah, you’re drunk.”

Aiba sat down, taking off his eagle head and holding it in his lap. “So why are you in here? Are you not up to the challenge of being Mabel Meerkat? Do you not want to be a girl meerkat?”

Nino didn’t want to look at him, that much was obvious. “It’s not that, although I don’t know why the meerkat has to be gender specific in the first place.”

He bopped the eagle’s head against Nino’s meerkat knee. “Well? You left me out there all by myself, and we’re both supposed to be on this shift! You know Matsuoka’s going to make us do something else to make up for the giraffe!”

“I’m sorry.”

Aiba leaned forward until he was nose to nose with the other man. “Hey, are you okay? What’s wrong? You can tell me. Eagles are very noble creatures and very trustworthy!”

“You say the stupidest shit, you know that?” Nino said, chuckling quietly. Well, whatever Nino said, at least Aiba had made him laugh a bit and that had to count for something.

“I’m in here because I’m not sure how much longer I can do this.”

Aiba looked at his wrist instinctively. “Well there’s only...well, I think there’s only half an hour left until the arcade shuts down for the night.”

“Not the shift, idiot. All of this. Dealing with Nagase, dealing with Nagase’s clinically insane manager and with bits of a Led Zeppelin shirt getting left behind like breadcrumbs! I had to drug Nagase today. Can you get that through your drunken head, Eagle Boy? I drugged the guy! I mean, not like I care about him or anything, but am I that terrible at my job that I have to drug the person I’m supposed to be helping?”

Aiba had had a few too many shots to give Nino a clear answer, and instead he picked up the meerkat head from the floor and gave it a kiss. The costume head tasted fuzzy.

“Feel better, Nino. We’ll get through this together!” He gave the meerkat head an affectionate pat before setting it back down, but then Nino caught him by the feathery wrist.

“I like you,” Nino blurted out.

“I like you too,” Aiba said automatically. “I like being part of the Floating Sakura!”

Nino’s grip tightened on him. “You are almost as dumb as Nagase. I said I LIKE you.”

He could see the slightest blush in Nino’s cheeks, and drunk or no, Aiba wasn’t actually as dumb as Nagase. He nearly jumped out of his feathers when he felt the meerkat costume paw on his cheek.

“You’re wasted, so do me a big favor and forget this, okay?” Nino said quietly before stealing his breath and kissing him.

Aiba knew almost instantly that kissing Nino was a really good thing. Nino might have been really skilled at moving his mouth to insult people, but he was even better at moving his mouth and saying nothing at all. It was really hot in the eagle costume though, and it was hard to sit cross-legged in it for very long so the kissing kind of got awkward. He ended up falling forward, landing on top of the even warmer to the touch meerkat costume (and obviously, the person inside it).

“Ow!” Nino complained as his back hit the supply closet floor. “Get off of me!”

But of course, this wasn’t really what Nino seemed to want since Aiba soon found two small, but possessive meerkat paws on his eagle butt.

“Margaritaville tomorrow!” he said once Nino let him breathe again.

“Turn the ship upside down,” Nino mumbled against his lips.

“You going with him?”

“Have to.”

“Okay.”

It was kind of awkward again. And even with eleventy-five shots, they were in the kids’ arcade supply closet in animal costumes. Nino finally seemed to realize this, and the paws at Aiba’s rear slipped away. He missed them immediately.

Aiba frowned. “Maybe we should...”

“You should forget this ever happened,” Nino said pointedly, wriggling his smaller body out from underneath him and picking up the meerkat head. “And sleep that...whatever you’ve been drinking off. I’m getting drunk just from making out with you.”

“I like making out with you,” he admitted.

Nino sighed. “Please god, let him forget this,” Aiba heard him mumble as he pushed past him and back out to the arcade floor.

He was still on a high from the drinks and the Nino kissing when he got back to the cabin. He was all set to admit what had happened to Sho and even though Sho would probably make faces and complain, he always listened (especially since Aiba always had to listen about how Jun had maybe-possibly-kinda-sorta winked at Sho in the hall that day blah blah).

But instead Sho had rather sobering news when Aiba entered their cabin.

His bunkmate held up another scrap of the Led Zeppelin shirt and a note.

“I can’t read right now. I’m drunk,” Aiba told him. He wasn’t really unable to read, but he didn’t want to see the words. Instead he shut his eyes, listening to Sho’s voice bounce off the cabin walls.

“Well it says ‘planning to waste away again in Margaritaville? Meet me by the Tiki Hut at Margaritaville at 9:30 PM and...’”

Aiba opened his eyes. “9:30?! But the ship leaves for open sea at...”

“...9:45 PM,” Sho finished. “Masaki, what are we going to do?”

\--

"Oi, Klingon! You got my meds?" Nagase shouted from the bathroom, as Nino was busy stuffing pill bottles into the carrying bag he was going to take ashore with him. His phone on his hip was already buzzing- no doubt it was Taichi, meaning Nino was going to ignore as many of Nagase's manager's calls as humanly possible.

"Yes," Nino called back. He zipped up the pouch and glared balefully down at it. "Are you sure you need me to go with you?"

Nagase poked his head out of the bathroom, half his hair sticking up from a severe over application of hair gel. "I can't remember to take all that by myself. Now listen, I need some beer to pregame this. Margaritaville is a big deal."

"It's named after a Jimmy Buffett song," Nino muttered to himself, but fetched the requested alcohol anyway, handing one into Nagase in the bathroom without looking inside (he'd learned the hard way that Nagase did not often wear pants while in front of the mirror, even when he was just doing his hair).

He heard Nagase crack the can open and sat down on the edge of the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Nagase continued doing whatever it was he was doing in the bathroom for awhile, and then Nino heard his footsteps approach the mattress where he was doing his inanimate object impersonation.

"Yo, I'm probably going to lose you when you are wearing that shit," Nagase said. "Put this on- so I can identify you."

Nino grabbed the garment that was thrown (at his head). "No."

"What do you mean, no?"

"I mean I'm not wearing this," Nino said, clinging desperately to the shreds of his dignity he still had left. He tossed the offending article back at Nagase. "What part of 'no' is confusing?"

Nagase looked confused for a long moment- probably because Nino had never really snapped at him before, and he wasn't used to people actually denying him what he was asking of them. But Nino was not going to be caught dead outside at a major tourist trap in a bright pink and orange Hawaiian print jumpsuit. He didn't even want to know why Nagase owned such an article of clothing.

In fact, there was no way it would even fit him.

Nagase laughed heartily. "You're funny. But seriously, I won't know where you are, so put it on."

The garment landed back in Nino's lap.

Five minutes later, Nino found himself in Nagase's bathroom glaring at his reflection in the large full-length mirror, jumpsuit securely on his body (belted because it was at least three sizes too large and nearly falling off of him). He dug his phone out of his pant pocket and dialed with trembling fingers.

"Whatever it is, my answer is no," Jun said immediately upon picking up.

"Please," Nino pleaded. "Please, you have to go ashore with me. I can't do this alone. He's insane. He's- whatever is beyond insane, he's that."

There was shuffling out past the closed door, and Nino looked fretfully back, afraid Nagase would simply burst into the bathroom without notice.

Jun sighed. "Why can't you ask Aiba? This is his problem."

Because I'm dressed in a hideous joke. Because this belt's buckle is a pair of copper breasts. Because I made out with him when he was drunk and I don't know if he remembers it. "I'll owe you, please just do it for me? Someone has to come with and go to the rendezvous point to get Sadie back."

Truth be told, Nino wasn't even sure Aiba was awake- he'd been so wasted the night before, he probably couldn't get out of bed. And Nino didn't want to call and check because that was just awkward, and he was already drowning in awkward that he couldn't avoid.

Jun hadn't said anything else, and Nino's desperation was growing. "Please?" he pleaded again. "Jun, please?"

"Fine," Jun growled. "But you owe me big time."

There was the angry click of the dial-tone, and Nino flipped his phone closed once more.

"Yo, Cadaver! Let's go, I wanna make sure I get there in time for happy hour!" Nagase called from the bedroom.

"Coming," Nino replied, heart in his stomach.

\--

Aiba woke up wanting to throw up.

He spent the next thirty minutes wanting to throw up, too, even as he did so (several times) and shakily made his way out of the bathroom to collapse back onto his pillow once more, head throbbing and fingers trembling. He vaguely heard Sho exit and re-enter the room.

He was trying really hard to block out all noise, because everything made him nauseous all over again, but Sho seemed determined to speak to him.

"Are you dying?" his roommate asked.

"Yes," Aiba moaned into his pillowcase.

Sho made a 'tsk' noise, like he very much wanted to comment on "imbibing too much with alcohol" or one of his other lectures. Aiba wanted to avoid all of it. He braced himself for something and when nothing came, sighed a little.

"Remember that you have to go ashore and meet with the thief to get the strap back," Sho reminded him.

Aiba shot upright. "Shit!"

The movement sent all the blood rushing to his head. He groaned, grabbed his face, and fell back down again. "I can't, I can't, I'm dying."

"You aren't dying," Sho said, "you are just severely dehydrated."

"I can't go," Aiba ignored him. His temples were pounding something horrible. "I won't make it through the day."

Sho did something- sounded as if he was pulling his tie off, as he had probably just gotten off his shift at the desk- and Aiba shot one hand out to grab a hold of his sleeve.

"Hey!" Sho cried, trying to tug his arm free.

"You have to go for me," Aiba whined. He was aware that what he was doing was shameful. He didn't care. "Please, Sho. Please- I think I'm done for."

Sho continued trying to shake Aiba's fingers loose. "Aiba, no, there is no way-"

"Help me, Shobi-wan Kenobi," Aiba cried. "You're my only hope!"

His roommate stilled, and sighed longingly, and even though Aiba had his eyes tightly closed (because he didn't want to see Sho's face and the disapproval there, he didn't think he could handle it), he could still see Sho's pinched expression in his mind's eye. Then Sho's hand covered his own, and he gently pried Aiba's fingers from his arm. "Okay."

Aiba opened one eye. "Really?"

"Yes, really, but this is the last time," Sho told him, sounding stern.

"Yes! I understand!" Aiba said, and then sagged back against his pillow once more. "But I really do think that I'm dying."

Sho patted his head. "Well, just make sure that all dying happens in the bathroom, and not on the floor, okay?"

\--

"I'm sorry, Taichi, but can you repeat that?" Nino shouted into his phone, one finger in his other ear in a fruitless attempt to drown out the noise. "It's really loud here, I can't hear anything you're saying."

He sincerely hoped it wasn't terribly important. "--make sure-- left -- him?"

"What?" Nino tried again.

He got even less the second time. All he could pick out was incoherent garbles between the screaming around him and the music being blasted far, far too loud (and if Nino never heard 'Cheeseburger in Paradise' again, it would be too soon).

"I'm sorry, Taichi, but I am not getting any of this," he said, giving up. "Listen, I've got to go- I think Nagase is ordering another round for the bar."

That was a lie. Nino could no longer see Nagase, and he was suddenly very nervous about said fact. He hung up without waiting to see if Taichi answered- not like he would have been able to understand it if he had, anyway. He scanned the crowd but found no sign of Nagase, and grabbed Jun's wrist as the other man moved by him.

"Where is he?" he asked.

Jun glared at him. "He's your charge, how did you lose him?"

"Last I saw, he was downing margaritas in a drinking contest with that old lady," Nino said. He continued looking over the tented deck- still no sign of the freakishly tall ex-rock star. "Now I can't find either of them!"

Jun made a disgusted face and sidestepped away from Nino. "Ew. Don't even ask me to go and find them if they are off somewhere doing... ew."

Nino's phone started buzzing again, and he hit ignore without looking down at the name on the screen. "Jun, I have to find him."

There was a large commotion coming from the direction of the water slide, and Nino's heart sank further. He suddenly had a very good idea where Nagase had disappeared to. He pushed his way through the bathing suit-clad patrons towards where the noise was coming from, stepping on a couple of old people who refused to get out of his way.

He was far, far too slow. He had only got halfway up the stairs before Nagase's swim trunks hit him in the face with a wet smack.

"Woohoo!" the man in question was shouting, drink raised into the air as he stood naked at the top of the slide. "Who wants me to go down without clothes on?!"

"Nagase!" Nino cried, looking down horrified at the garment in his hands. "Nagase, don't you even think about this-"

He lunged past the woman with the fake boobs and the too-small bikini top, past the old lady with the hair tinted blue, past the teenage girl trying to look like she was old enough to be drinking the cocktail in her manicured fingers. He fell past the throng and got his hands around Nagase's ankle just as the man jumped towards the rushing water.

And then was promptly pulled straight down the slide with him, face-first into the dips and turns.

By the time they hit the pool at the bottom, Nino was choking and coughing, and the subsequent fall into the deep end felt like a punch to the gut. He'd lost hold of Nagase's foot somewhere near the second twist and the giant belt buckle had caught on the side and torn clean off, so his jumpsuit was practically falling from his body.

All of this came rushing back as he sucked in air once he got himself clear of the water, and then he let himself sag back down into the pool again.

Large hands pulled him upwards, nearly dislodging the jumpsuit from his shoulders.

"Just let me drown," he moaned, spitting out water, hair sticking in his eyes.

"No way!" Nagase laughed, patting his back enthusiastically. "Did you hear those delighted screams? We gotta do this again!"

Nino didn't know where Jun was- but the coward had forsaken him, leaving him alone with this raging, drunken lunatic. He pulled himself out of the pool and landed hard on his phone in his pocket. With an exclamation, he tugged it out of his clothing.

Nothing. The thing wouldn't even turn on, displaying nothing but blankness.

Nino glared at it for a long second, and then promptly heaved it as far as he could down the beach line just past the fruity-colored umbrellas and deck chairs.

There was no way his day could possibly get any worse.


	7. Chapter 7

Sho had never been to Margaritaville; he didn't often make a habit of getting off the ship when it made port. But he'd heard passengers talk about it as they walked through the lobby and had once had to listen to a woman sobbing for ten minutes because she'd lost her favorite hat after dancing on the bar and had been hoping that someone had turned it into the Lost and Found, so he had a pretty good idea that he was walking into a large tourist trap. Jamaica looked awfully pretty from the windows of the ship, and even prettier when he was actually out and walking, taking in the hills covered with lush trees.

He left early, because he had to make sure he found the right corner to meet the thief at, and he wasn't sure how long it was going to take to find it.

He found Margaritaville with little problem, right as the sun was going down, and was pleased with his own navigational skills (even if following the excited cheers that he was pretty sure had something to do with stripping had helped immensely). He had some time to waste because the clock on the bar wall read that it wasn't even 8:30 yet, so he took a seat in the corner of the shack next to a few other tourists and some locals with rainbow colored hats.

"Hey, man, what's up?" one of the locals asked. "Here to party?"

"Oh, no," Sho told him, glancing around the bar to see if he could spot Nagase- whom he was quite sure was somewhere in the place. There were too many people to really see around, though, and he couldn't pick a single face out of the crowd. "I'm here on business, just waiting to meet someone."

The man next to him made some popping sounds with his mouth and smacked his palms against his knees a few times, like he was beating out a song on a drum. "Great, great. Get all kinds here, you know. Say, you interested in some food?"

Sho's stomach rumbled in response; he hadn't eaten after his shift. "What's good here?"

"What's good?" the man laughed. "Man, everything is good here! But you should try the brownies, they're wonderful."

Brownies sounded amazing. "Thanks. I'll go and get some."

"No need, man! No need!" The local pushed a napkin over in front of Sho on the small table between them. "I ordered too much, can't eat it all. Watching my figure, you know what I mean? Here, take it."

"Oh," Sho said. "Okay. Hey, thanks a lot."

Rainbow hat just smiled and nodded, patting out another tune on his thighs. The brownie was really delicious, and tasted like it was made with melted chocolate chips inside. Sho wiped bits of crumbs off his mouth, giving his new friend a thumbs up. Margaritaville wasn't so bad- everyone seemed to be really mellow and giving. All the partying raised people's spirits.

"Stick around, man," the man said. "And tell me about where you come from."

Well, Sho figured he might as well- he needed to wait until 9:30 anyway. And there was that really funny story about the lady who had misplaced her bikini in the hot tub.

\--

Wherever Nino had run off to, Jun had long since lost sight of him. He wasn't really terribly concerned- after all, Nagase was Nino's charge and not his, and he'd only been dragged along because he kind of felt sorry for his roommate's involvement in the whole fiasco. But after getting hit with an old lady's purse in the face and having stiletto heels pierce his toes from the drunken dancing going on around him, he was done having anything to do with the infernal place.

And he was so sick of hearing Cheeseburger in Paradise over and over and over again.

He just wanted to get the damn guitar strap back, and get the hell out of Margaritaville.

He was pulling streamers in the shape of margarita glasses out of his hair, rounding the bar to leave the stupid place and get to the meeting spot. He'd almost made it too, until somebody smacked right into him and nearly knocked him over a potted plant in the corner decorated with sparkling Christmas tree lights in the shape of pineapples.

"Jesus!" Jun cried, and then there were hands on his arms to steady him, fingers closing tight around his shoulder.

"Jun, oh man, I'm so sorry," Sho said. And then he giggled.

Really giggled.

Jun just stared at him (and Sho's hand was rapidly cutting off circulation in his arm). "Sho? What are you doing here? And how much liquor have you had?"

Sho didn't let go of Jun's arm, but his grip loosened somewhat, and then he leaned in a little bit. "Drink? What? No, I haven't been drinking at all! I'm here for the guitar strap! Hey, do you know what's weird? Flip-flops!"

"What?"

"Yeah, I mean, they don't really flip. Or flop. They kind of ... clack. Clack-smocks!" Sho giggled again. "Isn't that a better name? So much more clever!"

"Um," Jun said, and gently pried the other man's fingers off of his arm. "Okay. Listen, we need to get to the meeting spot and get Sadie back."

He had no idea what was going on. Sho was acting like he'd fallen face first into the loony pool, and Nino was nowhere in sight. Jun knew the ship was going to be leaving soon and that getting the strap back was going to make for a short window of time for them to return; he wasn't about to get left behind when his employment sailed off without him, not when he was so close to finally getting to work in the kitchen.

He found the door leading outside the bar, and the fresh air that assaulted him was heavenly. Sho sort of half-tumbled after him, and then his arms slipped around Jun's waist. He mashed his face up against Sho's shoulders, sighing.

"You are so warm," Sho murmured into Jun's shirt.

"Is there something in the water?" Jun asked aloud. He'd never seen the other man so damn touchy-feely- and were Sho's hands straying lower to his waistband? Jun yelped a sort of turned in the weird embrace, and then his back smacked into the wall behind him and Sho was very, very close.

"You wanna know a secret?" Sho whispered. Their noses were so close they were almost touching. "It's a really, really good one."

Jun's heart was hammering in his chest. Okay, so he'd assumed Sho was never going to work up the courage to make a move, and he'd obviously been wrong (even if it appeared to be liquid courage). But did the guy have to chose the time they were supposed to be retrieving the stolen strap to ramp it up to super-friendly?

"Sure," he managed to choke out. He knew they didn't have much time. He knew, and they had to get moving, and Sho's hips were sort of grinding into his own and oh, he wasn't sure he was going to be able to.

Where was Nino when Jun needed him?

Sho pressed his lips against the tip of Jun's nose, fingers gently brushing bangs out of Jun's eyes. "I like you."

All the air in Jun's lungs left in a hissing rush. "I actually knew that," Jun admitted.

And Sho didn't pull away. If anything, he pushed their bodies closer together, and Jun's hands rose unbidden to tangle in the fabric of Sho's shirt. The meeting time, the meeting time, the meeting time-

"Good," Sho breathed.

They had to get Sadie back.

And then Sho pressed his mouth against Jun's, and every thought Jun had disappeared completely.

\--

Things were always a bit hectic after a port-stop, when the guests were filing their way back onto the ship in various states of mental impairment- but Sho hadn't checked back in yet, and he was supposed to be working the re-entry decks to swipe cards and check for contraband.

Aiba looked frazzled- or, at least, more so than usual- and it was really the only reason that Ohno volunteered to help, since he had a free night from bartending and he felt a bit bad for the other man. It wasn't entirely Aiba's fault that everything had fallen apart.

"Welcome back, we hope you enjoyed your day in Jamaica," Ohno said to a lady with a hat on that was taller than her head.

"Sho went ashore because I asked him to," Aiba said. He was very nervous. He handed one of the guests' card back to them without even looking at the picture that came up on screen (which was a rather humorous shot of the man glancing to one side like he was in the middle of yelling at his obnoxious five-year-old son). "What if something happened? What if it was a trap?"

"What kind of a trap?" Ohno asked.

Aiba thought about this as a large group of Taiwanese tourists walked by speaking rapid-fire in a language Ohno didn't understand. They were all sporting shirts with marijuana leaves emblazoned on the front over the colors of the Jamaican flag, and Ohno thought about mentioning to them what they were really advertising on themselves, and then thought better of it. Might as well let them have their souvenirs.

"Maybe he was killed," Aiba whispered, swallowing hard.

He had leaned in a lot when he lowered his voice, so Ohno leaned in as well. "Why would someone want to kill him?"

"I don't know!" Aiba wailed suddenly, and a few of the returning stragglers turned to stare at him. Ohno just waved them on with the most serene smile he could and tossed a few "welcome aboard!"s in their direction.

"Aiba," Ohno started, and suddenly it felt like he was back behind a bar again, working with a customer who was plastered and sobbing into the countertop, "this isn't your fault. And I don't think Sho got killed. We already knew the timing was going to be tight."

It seemed to appease the other man enough that he could continue swiping cards, and the two worked in relative silence getting the last of the guests onboard. They only had a few minutes more to keep the portal open before Captain Kimura would signal to close everything up and get ready to get back underway.

There was the sound of squishing behind them, sort of like someone was stepping on wet sponges, and Ohno turned to find Nino there, hair wet and sticking to his face. He looked murderous, but also kind of shifty, like he was deliberately not looking in Aiba's direction.

"Is Jun back yet?" he asked.

"Jun?" Ohno asked.

Aiba seemed to register Nino's presence and promptly dropped the ID card he was in the middle of swiping. "Oh! Hi... Nino."

"Hey, Aiba," Nino said, without looking anywhere near where Aiba was standing. "And yes, Jun- I sent him off to go to the pick-up location."

"I thought Sho was going to the meeting place," Ohno said.

There was a moment of silence punctuated by some drunk guy's cheers of "I love Jamaica!" and Ohno could practically see the cogs in Nino's head spinning.

"So what we are saying," Nino said, very slowly, "is that we sent two people to this meeting place who may or may not want to bang each other so hard it's felt on Mars, to meet up with a shady character who stole Nagase's guitar strap, and neither of them have checked in yet?"

Ohno looked down at the screen, and then at the deck leading up to their location in the side of the ship. "We may need to go and find them."

The red intercom button started flashing on the console.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back aboard the Floating Sakura," Captain Kimura's voice said, ringing through the corridors. "We hope you enjoyed your free day on the beautiful island of Jamaica. Please feel free to watch from the Lido deck as we prepare to continue our journey. Crew, please prepare ship for departure."

Ohno met Nino's eyes, then Aiba's.

"Oh my god," Aiba cried. "They aren't back yet! What do we do?"

"Stall," Nino said, furiously, diving forward for the controls of the door to jam them open. "Stall like your life depends on it. They have to be close."

"Depends on your definition of close," Ohno added, and Nino didn't seem to think that was very funny. They waited as all the remaining guests meandered up through the halls and then they were alone, staring out at the deck boards and the dark water reflecting the moon in the sky on the tops of the waves.

The intercom light blinked again, and this time the voice came through the speakers on the console they were standing just behind. "Crew, why is the door not closed yet?"

"Uh, technical difficulties," Ohno said into the microphone.

"Is everything alright?"

Nino was waving his hands wildly at Ohno, making faces that just sort of looked like panic. "Yes, I'm fine, we're all fine. How are you?"

Stall, Nino was mouthing in an incredibly helpful manner.

"We'll send some maintenance down to help," the commanding officer said.

"Uh, oh no," Ohno winced, "uh, that's not necessary. Someone's--- uh, shoe is caught. We're just removing the article now and everything should be fine."

There was a pause. Nino looked vaguely horrified, Aiba's face was stuck in a permanent state of surprise, and Ohno thought maybe he should have come up with something better. He really wasn't very good at thinking on the fly.

"Crew, what is your employee ID number?"

Ohno withdrew his finger from the transmit button. "Well, I think they might get stuck here."

"Wait!" Aiba cried, throwing his arm to one side like a mother stopping quickly at a red light trying to shield her child in the passenger seat. "Wait, I think that's them."

Ohno glanced down the dock to see two figures running towards the portal faster than he'd really ever seen anyone run before. Behind them, the footsteps of the aforementioned maintenance workers were starting to echo through the chamber.

Both Sho and Jun were flushed and out of breath when they reached the console station; Sho sort of fell over and half-collapsed onto the floor sounding like he had suddenly come down with sports-induced asthma, and Jun had one hand up on the podium to steady himself. Neither seemed to be able to speak- yet.

"Where's the malfunction?" one of the maintenance guys asked.

Ohno smacked his hand down on the 'close' button, and the gears skidded into sudden movement. "We fixed it. It was just a shoe, like I said."

"Well?" Nino asked, all wide-eyed and anxious as he took a step forward. "Did you get it back? Was Sadie there?"

"No," Jun heaved. It was only then that Ohno noticed that his shirt was halfway unbuttoned and the fly of his pants were unzipped. He filed this away in 'things he really didn't want to ask about' section of his mind. And he was disappointed, not only because they didn't have Sadie still, but also because both Nino and Aiba were rapidly deflating.

Then Jun held his hand out, the hand not currently anchoring his weight upright on the machinery. "But we did find this."

"A button?" Ohno asked, reaching for it and inspecting it in the lights.

"A button from one of the officer's uniforms," Jun clarified.

Sho was still wheezing, but pushed himself up on all fours. "It's definitely someone on the ship."

"Why would they leave us this?" Nino asked. He took the small gold object from Ohno's palm and turned it over and over, almost like he was searching for a secret message carved into the bottom or something. "Do they want us to figure out who they are? Is that the point? Is this some kind of game?"

"I don't know," Jun said, "but let's get out of here. We're really obvious standing around like this."

Ohno watched as the other four slowly made their way from the chamber. Jun's hand found Sho's elbow a bit, fingers pressing just lightly against the joint, and after a few moments, Nino patted Aiba's shoulder a bit, lingering longer than he needed to.

Ohno smiled a bit, and wondered if he could get a job as a match-maker should the Floating Sakura not pan out in the long run.

\--

The next afternoon they were docked again, this time at Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas. It had been a strange night. Sure, they’d found the button in the special spot the Sadie-napper had designated, but he and Sho had barely found it in time. Probably on account of the very, very good time they’d been having up until their last second dash for the meet-up.

But Jun was rather fearful. Since, after all, Sho had not had total control of his faculties at the time. It wasn’t really rape when a secondhand stoner shoved HIS hand down YOUR pants, was it? He wasn’t really sure about the nuances of maritime law concerning that. Even though they’d been on Jamaican soil, they’d been in the part of Margaritaville owned by the company.

He sighed, carrying yet another tub of filthy plates (make your own tacos!) to the kitchen. It was pointless to think about. Sho was probably not going to speak to him again, they’d be in Miami in two days, and Jun would especially miss the way Sho’s voice sounded when he was whispering in his ear, just as he was about to-

“You.”

Jun nearly smacked into the swinging door. Nino was staring at him.

“What do you want?” He hadn’t spoken to his roommate much either. The cabin last night had been...well, it had been awkward. Nino had been kind enough to comment that Jun had returned smelling like a frat party before requesting that he examine his zipper.

His encounter with Sho was technically Nino’s fault for not communicating with Aiba. This was mostly their mess, and he and Sho had gotten dragged along. And then things had just happened in Margaritaville. Things that probably would have happened between him and Sho eventually but had been inadvertently sped up by some particularly potent ganja. Then again, maybe the Sadie-napper had banked on their awkward and their confusion. Maybe the button was just another tease.

“Family conference, dillhole,” Nino said. “As soon as Sho’s shift is over, we’re meeting up on the lido deck. We have to figure out whose uniform’s missing a button.”

“Sho went to work?”

Nino rolled his eyes. “What, did you want him to lay in his bunk all day missing you?”

Okay, Jun realized. Nino wasn’t so much grumpy as he was probably jealous. Not that Nino had been oversharing about whatever he had going with Masaki, but it was clear they hadn’t gone to Margaritaville, hint hint, nudge nudge. Instead, Jun’s roommate had gotten sunburnt chasing down a big gorilla of a man while Jun was getting laid. If their situations were reversed, he’d probably sympathize.

But he didn’t.

“Yeah, whatever. My shift’s over in an hour. I’ll find you later.”

He let the swinging door open and shut in Nino’s face.

\--

Their “family” conference started on a particularly deserted part of the lido deck. It seemed as though the wild and crazy partying at Margaritaville hadn’t deterred the spirits of most of the passengers. In fact, a record number were ashore, Ohno mentioned as they stood around an empty shuffleboard scoring zone.

Nobody was looking at each other, Jun realized almost immediately when he approached. Sho was sitting down looking like he wanted to sleep for a month while Nino and Aiba were standing on either side of Ohno not speaking.

“Didn’t have to wait for me,” he mumbled, moving to stand closer to Masaki. It was probably his safest bet.

Nino had the button, and it was gleaming in the sunlight as he held it out in his palm. “We can’t just go up to the bridge and start staring at people’s uniforms.”

“Since Mr. Kusanagi’s still in the brig or the drunk tank or wherever,” Aiba pointed out, “isn’t Sho the Chief Purser now? That makes him a senior officer.”

Sho shook his head. “Captain didn’t say anything about that. Believe me, that’s not something I’d forget.”

“And besides, what would the purser be doing staring at senior staff uniforms? He’s not the button police,” Nino complained.

“That’s more like Nakai’s department,” Ohno commented, looking suddenly annoyed. “Oh crap.”

Jun remembered going through the laundry room with Ohno. Had it only been a week ago? Nakai had not been the most pleasant person either, but then again, Jun wouldn’t have been too friendly if he caught people going through the kitchen or dining room when they weren’t supposed to be there.

“So we go ask him if any of the senior staff has gone to housekeeping for a button replacement? That’s a stretch,” Jun said.

“Guys,” Ohno mumbled.

“Do you have a better plan?” Nino asked, staring daggers at Jun.

“Do you?” he shot back, quickly losing his temper as the sun beat down on them.

“Guys.”

“Hey, you could have gotten a look at our guy yesterday,” Nino complained. “But no! You and Hangover Boy here had to go pickle chasing at Margaritaville!”

“Nino, that’s not fair,” Aiba interrupted.

“You can bang anywhere you want, any time you want,” Nino continued screeching, “But you pick the time when you’re supposed to be helping us out. I was trying to make sure Nagase didn’t end up in a pool of his own vomit or blood or semen, and all you had to do was meet there!”

“Stop putting all your dirty work on us!” Jun shouted. “The only reason we’re all involved in your stupid mess is because you can’t hack it in this job!”

Aiba looked forlorn. “Don’t yell at Nino!”

“Can you all stop yelling?” Sho complained, holding his head.

“Can you keep it in your pants?” Nino snapped, prodding Sakurai with his shoe.

“I was on drugs!” Sho cried.

“You were on what?” Aiba asked.

“GUYS!”

The four of them turned to look at Ohno after his sudden outburst. He was pointing down the deck past them. They turned, and Jun’s jaw dropped.

Six men about their age, best guess, were standing there with guns. They had tri-corner hats, a hodgepodge of jackets or torn coats, and one even had a hook for a hand. If Jun didn’t know any better, they looked like pirates.

One was standing in the front, pistol in one hand and a walking stick in the other. He cocked his head, tapping the stick on the deck. “I’m Captain Kamenashi. This is a hijacking.”

Okay. They really were pirates.

The five of them huddled together, crowded around the still sitting Sho as the pirates took a step forward, guns pointed their way.

Another pirate took the pipe from his mouth to blow smoke rings. “Yo ho.”


	8. Chapter 8

The pirate captain was tapping his stick on the deck over and over again, complaining about being off schedule as the pirate with the long white cape and the one with the aviators were tying Jun, Sho and Ohno together. Nino’s knees were already aching from kneeling on the deck.

“Tighter, Junno,” Aviators insisted. “Don’t pussy out.”

They certainly had interesting vocabulary for pirates, Nino thought as Aiba wriggled and complained beside him. They were next for the creepy bondage. The captain had sent two of his companions off to “overtake the bridge.” How many of these guys were on board? Were they going to hijack the whole ship? Rob them all blind?

All of the training he’d done about potential hijackings had flown out of his head as soon as there’d been a pistol in his face. Dealing with the button and Sadie and the silly fight were nothing compared to the legitimate danger they were in.

Junno cleared his throat. “Um, Captain?”

Kamenashi looked over. “What?”

“We need more rope if we’re going to get these other two.”

“Forget it,” the captain said, cocking his pistol and aiming it in his and Aiba’s direction. “They aren’t going anywhere.”

Aviators crouched down to smile at them, chomping on some gum. “Just stay quiet, and we won’t keelhaul ya.”

He and Junno headed back to confer with their leader, and Aiba sniffled beside him. “What does keelhaul mean?”

Nino rolled his eyes. He could hear Jun grumbling behind them about Ohno falling asleep. How he could be asleep at a time like this, Nino didn’t understand. But the guy probably figured it was the closest to playing dead so the pirates didn’t kill him. Not that Nino was overly fond of having his current home hijacked, but maybe just giving in would save all of their asses.

Most of the ship was empty with almost all the passengers ashore. It was perfect timing. The ship was on a lower security alert and boarding would be easy with the ship anchored just off-shore.

“Nino…”

“Be quiet, would you?”

“Nino!” He was whispering more insistently this time.

“I’m right next to you, jackass. Be quiet before…”

Kamenashi walked over, glaring. “You’re noisy. Koki, get him out of here.”

Nino felt an odd twisting in his gut as the one seemingly named after Coca-Cola hauled Aiba to his feet. It was pretty obvious that this wasn’t going to end well. Why couldn’t Aiba just be quiet? Why did he always have to talk?

“Please,” Aiba was begging, his Masaki nametag with the smiley face sticker falling to the deck, clattering to where Nino was still on his knees with his hands behind his head. He could almost feel the others’ eyes on him. Won’t you do something, Nino? Won’t you put your own life at risk to save him?

“I’m telling you,” Aiba said, “if you’re here for Sadie, we can’t help you!”

“Masaki, they’re not here for…”

“You shut up already,” Kamenashi said, pointing his pistol at him. The guy was getting antsy – had the other two he’d sent off already overthrown Captain Kimura and the rest of the crew?

All this time, Nino had been worried about simple things like losing his job or Nagase hugging him – with the way Koki was hauling Aiba to the edge of the lido deck, maybe he ought to worry about the increasingly likely possibility that he might die today.

“Nino, do something,” Jun hissed.

But what? There were only five of them – scratch that, four (Satoshi was still snoozing through the mayhem). He’d seen six of them and who knew how many more were robbing staterooms throughout the ship at that very moment.

“We don’t have Sadie!” Aiba cried. “Don’t make me walk the plank!”

There’s no plank here, you idiot, Nino thought, desperate to find some solution here. He thought back to their first meeting and later pushing that stupid giraffe into the elevator. He remembered Aiba in that stupid eagle costume and the feeling of the man’s weight atop him as he discovered just how good a kisser the guy could be once he stopped yapping.

There were tears in Aiba’s eyes, and it really was a long way down from the lido deck to the water and the thought of Masaki being gone…

Well, maybe it was enough to make Kazunari Ninomiya do something incredibly stupid.

In spite of the lead pirate’s pistol in his face, Nino got to his feet and held out his fists. The Floating Sakura was his home, and they weren’t going to take it without a fight.

“Sit down or you’ll join your friend.” The pirate gave a signal to Koki, who hoisted Aiba in the air until he was hanging over the side.

Nino just kept up his fists, tilting his head to hear the satisfying pops in his neck as he stared the pirate down.

“Get off our boat.”

There was silence as Kamenashi stared him down. Now that he was standing up, he was realizing that his foot was half asleep. He’d be kind of ineffective, but at least for the time being, the Koki guy wasn’t dropping Aiba into the water and to his potential death. Nino was happy if Aiba was alive.

The other two pirates targeted Nino, but the stalemate continued, almost daring him to step up and try to fight them.

“Catapult! What’s going on here?”

Oh god, the pirates were going to kill them all now. Nino turned to see Nagase charging his way towards them with a shuffleboard paddle in his hand. He tried to meet Aiba’s eyes, begging him not to bring Sadie up, especially not now.

The pirates turned their attention to the newest arrival. Nagase was taller than everyone, even the one in the cape. And he was on the warpath.

“Pirates! You see, Joan? I told you! Pirates!”

“Who the hell is Joan?” Aviators asked, taking a step back from the crazed man with the paddle.

Jun sighed noisily, wriggling around in the ropes. “That’s me. Technically.”

Kamenashi looked rather annoyed at the intrusion, waving the others over for another conference. They were rather disorganized pirates. Nino strained to hear, catching hints of their chat. Something about “where the hell is Ueda” and “not supposed to get passengers involved.” What the hell was going on?

Nagase stepped in front of Nino then, holding up the paddle. “Don’t worry, Catapult. I’ll protect you.”

Nino had never known this feeling before, even as it was welling up inside of him. Could it be gratitude? He shook his head, trying to dislodge that nasty sensation. Nagase HAD made him taste test all of his flavored condoms the other day. “It’s okay, Mr. Nagase. You should go back to your cabin. It’s not safe here.”

Kamenashi tapped his stick angrily. “What makes you think we’ll just let him run back?”

Nagase took a menacing step forward, and the pirates jumped in fright. Even Koki had pulled Aiba back to safety and was now cowering behind him. Come to think of it, there’d been something a little off about these pirates since they’d shown up, but Nino had been too busy being terrified to have really noticed.

But now he did. The guy with the aviators...was a pirate in sunglasses. Junno had a fancy pirate cape, but he was also wearing Chuck Taylors. He eyed the “pirate” captain’s gun and patted Nagase’s arm.

“Okay,” Nino said, moving his VIP passenger behind him and offering a weak round of applause. “The jig is up, you guys.”

“Nino, what are you doing?” Sho cried as he stood close enough for Captain Kamenashi’s pistol to be inches from his face.

“Catapult, don’t throw your life away for me!” Nagase pleaded. Not that Nino would ever be retarded enough to do something like that.

Kamenashi’s lip was twitching. “I’ll...I’ll shoot you. This boat will be ours.”

Aiba was looking horrified. “Nino, seriously, don’t do this.” He shook Koki. “Come on, throw me overboard or whatever. Just don’t hurt him!”

Behind him, Sho and Jun were both chiding him for being stupid while Ohno was snoring. Nagase was blubbering about noble sacrifices. And in front of him, Aviators and Cape were whispering to each other.

“Enough!” Nino shouted, silencing everyone. He grabbed the muzzle of the pistol and brought it against his forehead. “Do it. Come on, do it!” He smiled, lowering his voice so only “Captain” Kamenashi could hear him. “What are you going to do? Dampen me to within an inch of my life?”

A walkie talkie on Koki’s belt beeped. “Hey Koki! It’s Nakamaru! What’s taking so long? The simulation was only supposed to go until 2:00 PM. Kame, you there?” Koki fumbled with the walkie, shutting it off as his face reddened in embarrassment.

Kamenashi frowned. “Alright, alright.” He yanked the water pistol back, and Nino could already feel the bead of water trickling down his forehead. “Okay, we’re not really pirates.”

“No shit,” Jun announced, although up til a minute ago he’d been whining like a girl about Nino’s actions. It seemed everyone else was catching on. Aviators and Junno even started shooting each other with the water pistols.

Nagase sat down on the deck in shock. “But you looked so much like Johnny Depp!”

Kamenashi looked puzzled for a moment but shook his head. “Yeah, okay. This was just a trial run.” He dug around inside his coat and handed Nino a business card. “We’re actors. Your cruise line hired us to pose as hijackers as part of future crew training exercises.”

Aiba looked rather grumpy, yanking Koki’s walkie away and tossing it over the edge. “Hey!” Koki shouted, “I paid twenty bucks for that!”

“Nearly throwing me overboard part of your acting?” Aiba complained before hurrying over to give him a great big hug. “You okay, Nino?”

He was so relieved that the really big crisis had been averted that he didn’t even jump at the way Aiba was nearly wrapped around him. He just gave Kamenashi a salute. “You guys are really bad actors.”

“It’s a work in progress,” Junno declared. “Jin seriously, I’ve got my contacts in, stop shooting my face.”

“Will someone please untie us already?” Sho whined.

“Whoa, sorry!” Aviators Jin laughed, hurrying over.

Nagase was still crying about Johnny Depp for some reason, and Nino and Aiba stepped a little further away from him. “So are you uh...” Nino said, trying to hint that they all had work to get back to, “...going to leave now?”

“What are we paying for?” they heard from behind them, seeing Captain Kimura approaching. The other two pirates were trailing him. One was holding the fake hook in his hand sheepishly. “You are the worst pirates I’ve ever seen! This is what they’re sending?”

Kame looked embarrassed. “To be fair, sir, the contract just said pirates. There was no historical date listed so...”

“So you thought you’d be extra convincing if you went all 18th century on my crew here?” Kimura sneered. “That one’s wearing sneakers!”

The Captain was furious, a vein bulging on his neck. It was kind of scary. “It was a rehearsal, man,” Aviators Jin snorted, popping his gum.

“GET THE FUCK OFF MY BOAT!”

Nino had never seen six morons in costume store pirate get-up run so fast, and he wanted to laugh but then Captain Kimura’s ire was directed to them.

“Why are the five of you idiots off duty?”

Aiba looked ready to get on his hands and knees and beg for his job when Nagase got up, sniffling.

“Man, Captain Kimura, I gotta tell you. These guys have been like, the biggest help to me. I swear, each and every one of these dudes is my dawg for life now.” Nino felt Nagase’s meaty hand clamp down on his shoulder. “Canterbury here waits on me better than a Taiwanese sex worker, the fuzzy haired one brought me a free spotted horse.” He gestured to the other three. “Jean’s great, the bartender guy is great...the uh...well, I don’t know the other guy, but he seems pretty cool.”

Captain Kimura shuddered as Nagase stepped forward to embrace him.

“What I’m saying, man, is that this has been the best vacay of my life, and I will tell every single person I know to use your cruise line,” Nagase said, grinning from ear to ear. “Now if you gents will excuse me, I have to drop some kids off at the pool.”

Nagase walked off, and Captain Kimura was speechless. The rock star had saved them twice now, and Nino wasn’t sure what to do.

But there was little time to worry about that. “Get back to work.”

They scurried off, having dodged a lot of freaking bullets. Ohno caught his elbow before they headed down the steps. “Have a nice nap?” Nino asked him.

“I saw it,” Ohno assured him, pointing to his collar. “Or more like I didn’t see it.”

“See what?”

Ohno smiled. “His button was missing.”

“Ugh, Satoshi, whose button?”

“Captain Kimura’s.”

\--

Nino found Ohno back near the kitchen before the dinner started, where waiters and staffers were running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

"You're sure?" he asked, again, for the umpteenth time. "This is our last chance."

The Floating Sakura Captain's Dinner always took place on the last night- a celebration of the journey they'd taken on the cruise together, employees and guests, and although it was always touted as a 'big, important and FUN!' happening on the boards near the staff lounge (sometimes there was even puff paint that sparkled on the posters), it was really just the night that everyone freaked out the most because the higher-ups were paying even closer attention than normal, and all the guests were in formalwear.

"I'm sure," Ohno said. If he was annoyed at Nino's constant requirement for him to repeat himself, he didn't show it. He just shook up another Key Lime Pie martini after carefully dipping the glass in graham cracker crumbs to coat the lip.

Nino sighed. He could see Jun across the room busing tables and refilling water goblets- he looked irritated beneath the surface, but it could have been just from the stress of the fake pirate scare- and he hadn't seen Aiba or Sho all night. He knew they had to be close by; everyone was required to work the Captain's Dinner in some capacity.

And Captain Kimura himself was around somewhere, loitering, perhaps, behind dark corners waiting to screw up their lives some more.

"What the hell is his motive?" Nino grumbled to himself, and toed the design in the carpet while a few late guests moved past him to be seated at their elaborately decorated tables. "What did we ever do to him?"

"I think we'll find that out when we ask about it," Ohno said reasonably.

Nino chewed on the inside of his lip- the dinner was officially starting. "Yeah. I guess."

Nagase was near the front, being VIP, and he was already on his second Jack and coke, which Nino found worrisome. He just wanted one night to be able to confront Kimura and demand to know why he stole the guitar strap, and he was still stuck baby-sitting the most addled former rock-star he'd ever met. Not that he'd met a lot of rock stars, but the point was still there.

The Floating Sakura string quartet was playing in the corner, some classical piece with a lot of triplets and jumps, and Nino just found the whole thing annoying.

"Okay, he's going to make his speech first," Nino said to Ohno, who was still mixing drinks behind the counter, ice clanking against the metal sides of the shaker, "and then he'll sit down at the front table. We can go up there and say we need to talk to him about something."

"What about?"

Nino shrugged. "I don't know, something. Anything. There's a fire in the kitchen, there's a dolphin that jumped up on the deck, I don't care- just something to get him away from the table and away from the dinner."

Ohno made a vaguely affirmative noise, and Nino hoped the other man was really listening.

"So then, we can ask why he took Sadie," Nino finished. "He'll be cornered. He can't get out of it."

And then there were footsteps behind Nino's form that he didn't hear until they were right behind him. He spun to see Aiba, eyes wide and focused at the front of the dining hall. "Who has Sadie?"

"Aiba, wait-" Nino started, but Aiba was coiled energy and angry retaliation, and Captain Kimura was rising to his feet to begin speaking.

"He took Sadie?!" Aiba cried out, just as the room went silent to await the Captain's speech.

Nagase's head snapped up.

Jun dropped the wine glass he'd been clearing from a woman's setting.

Captain Kimura's eyes slowly moved from the quartet in the corner to Nino and Aiba standing near the bar.

"Oh my god," Nino groaned.

"Joan!" Nagase cried, from his seat at the table, and all too late Nino noticed that his second drink was empty. "Joan- did you hear that?! Joan!"

Nino grabbed at Aiba, but the man was too upset, too shaken, too pissed off from days spent as a nervous wreck trying to figure out what happened to the guitar strap. He moved forward, striding purposefully towards the center of the room, and Nino's fingers just curled around his wrist without really doing much to stop him.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Kimura started, voice as smooth as Nino had ever heard it, "thank you so much for joining the crew of the Floating Sakura tonight for the Captain's Dinner..."

"He took--!" Aiba started. He had a finger in the air pointed accusingly towards Kimura, and Nino finally dug his heels into the ground and got enough leverage to stop him. He threw a look over his shoulder towards Ohno, who was gesturing helplessly, and then towards Jun, who was still shell-shocked with pieces of glass around his feet.

Nino did the only thing he could think of. He flung Aiba around and kissed him, hard, trying to shut him up. But it was too late, and the damage had been done.

Nagase surged to his feet and managed to somehow overturn the whole table. "Did someone say he took Sadie?! Cleopatra, where are you when I need you?!"

"Mr. Nagase, please calm down!" Sho said, flying out of nowhere with hands waving in front of his form. He even managed to get a hold of one of Nagase's arms, which was an impressive feat. Jun had finally righted himself, and started furiously apologizing to the other guests as he tried to clean up the mess Nagase's table-flipping had caused.

"Can there be no order on this ship?!" Captain Kimura yelled. His voice carried over everything- it commanded respect, commanded listening. Everything paused at the same time, and Nino wrenched his mouth away from Aiba's to turn his gaze towards the front of the room.

"This is my ship!" Kimura exclaimed. "This is my ship, and I will have order! It doesn't matter that I used to play bass better than anyone else, better than everyone else! I could have been famous, and I should have been famous, until our lead singer got so messed up on drugs and alcohol and loose women that he got stuck in rehab, and the band broke up. I had to take care of my family, so I became the captain of a cruise line!"

He was seething, breathing hard. From his place across the room, Nino could see the rise and fall of the sharp-pressed lines of his uniform- and the button missing from the symmetry of it.

"Do you have any idea what it's like to have to do this?" Kimura continued. "I don't even get to drive the ship! I walk around and I sip mimosas and I make small-talk with the retirees, and that is my life! I could have been famous! I could have been rich!"

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a ratty-looking guitar strap, holding it above his head like a spoil of victory. "And now, here's what you get! For taking all of that away!"

Everything happened all at once.

Nagase broke free from Sho's hold with what could only be called a savage war-cry. He reached down to the table he'd knocked over in his haste and his hand came back out with his illegal machete. Aiba shouted a warning. Sho's head met Nagase's elbow as the man surged forward. When Sho fell, Jun lunged, and knocked over a little old lady who had been sneaking M & M's from her purse.

The lady choked. Nino bolted. Jun tripped.

Nagase managed to get himself on top of the tables and started charging across them with his machete held out in front of him, stepping on glasses and plates and fine china like it was nothing, spewing bits of glass and porcelain in every direction. Guests started screaming. Kimura was so shocked that he didn't even move until Nagase was right in front of him, and then his duck was a second too late. Nagase's machete caught the end of his hair, slicing off locks that fell into one of the only water glasses his boots hadn't trampled all over.

And then, over all the shouts and cries of alarm, Nino heard something that sounded like a goose being strangled to death, piped over the loudspeakers.

Nino turned towards Ohno's bar with his hands over his ears. "What is this?!"

"Nakai's CD of Madonna covers!" Ohno replied, in the same position. He grimaced and looked up at the speakers. "I thought it would help!"

The truth was that nothing could help. It was far too late for that- Nagase screamed something else that may or may not have been Swahili and swung at Kimura again, and Kimura fell down to his knees behind the head table, and when Nagase took another step forward, he upset the table's balance. The whole thing toppled forward, sending plates and candles flying.

The candles caught the carpet on fire, and the tablecloth of the head table itself.

And all Nino could hear was the worst version of Like a Virgin he'd ever heard in his life.

"Nino!" Jun hollered. "Nino, the tablecloth!"

Nino was closer to the flames leaping up towards the ceiling. He'd lost sight of Kimura, and Nagase was struggling to his feet after somersaulting off the crashing table, and he just moved, as fast as he knew how, grabbing the first thing he could see to put out the fire. Which happened to be the punch bowl.

Just as he threw the pineapple mixture over the fire, the sprinklers kicked on.

"This! Is! Not! Acceptable!" Captain Kimura roared, as Nino pushed already sopping wet hair out of his eyes and stared down at the charred remains of the tablecloth. Some of the guests were crying. Everyone was soaking.

"I lost my machete," Nagase was mumbling, feeling around the mess on the floor.

"You!" Kimura screamed. "You are all fired!"

Nino looked at Ohno, who sighed and looked at Jun, who glared and looked at Sho, who put a hand to his head and looked at Aiba, who sort of shrugged and looked back at Nino.

"Well," Nino said.

One of the guests started a slow-clap, and Nakai warbled another note of Like a Prayer.

\--

EIGHT MONTHS LATER

“Well, I need to stay in the van,” Sho protested, crossing his arms like a petulant little boy. “What if they want to call and verify your identity?”

“But our covers are all pretty legit, right?” Aiba asked, looking in his white coat for his fake ID. “My name is John Fernandez. I look kind of Hispanic, right?”

“Sure,” Ohno said, looking at his own health inspector badge. “I’m Mick Jagger.”

“That says Mick Jagger, bikini inspector, Satoshi,” Sho complained. “You couldn’t have coughed up another few dollars for a better fake?”

Ohno frowned and squinted at the ID. “So you’re saying I don’t look British?”

Nino sighed. So this was his life now. The Floating Sakura was a distant memory, but in this economy, they were lucky they even had jobs. Nino didn’t miss having to take meds every day to avoid seasickness. He didn’t miss the sunburn and the surprise psychopath commanding officers enacting their own revenge scenarios at his expense.

Hell, he even had a boyfriend now. Not just random, unsatisfying sex, but someone who was good in bed AND paid his half of the rent and water bill. Aiba’s cooking tended towards the unusual, but it meant Nino got to sleep in another few minutes. Of course, having to continue working with his boyfriend wasn’t ideal, but the bills had to get paid somehow. Nino was just grateful he’d kept that pirate idiot’s business card.

“We can’t leave the van in the to-go parking space,” Sho muttered, eyes darting back and forth. “I’m going to move the van.”

“You’re so transparent,” Nino interrupted, slamming the sliding van door shut and nearly crushing Sho’s fingers. “We all know why you don’t want to go in.”

“I don’t,” Ohno admitted, shoving his bikini inspector card back in the plastic badge holder.

Nino peered in through the Applebee’s window, seeing all the chubby families spilling drinks and trashy couples on what they probably thought was an exciting date. Somewhere in the kitchens beyond, Jun was probably slaving away with OCD precision over another Steak Quesadilla Tower.

“I just don’t want to interrupt him during work,” Sho mumbled, turning red.

“You just don’t want him withholding sex in retaliation,” Nino pointed out, and Sho scowled at him. Which meant Nino had definitely hit the nail on the head.

Aiba waved the folder around. “Well, they’ve been trying to serve that line cook with these divorce papers for three weeks. We’re the wife’s last resort.”

Nino looked at the four of them in their health inspector costumes, which was actually just white lab coats and clipboards. Satoshi had thoughtfully worn flip-flops to complete his professional appearance. They were actors now. They weren’t in the purser’s office or the attendants’ office or the Coconut Cabana.

This was their life now, and Nino far preferred it.

“Gentlemen,” he said, leaning against Aiba and poking him with his clipboard. “We have a job to do.”

It was almost fitting that Tomoya Nagase’s latest runaway smash hit “Too Drunk to Get Seasick” was playing as they stormed into the Applebee’s kitchen.


End file.
